No good reason for dodging votes

THIS year’s legislative session will include votes on numerous tax increases and assorted government reforms, including those advanced by the Step Up Oklahoma coalition. Whether one supports or opposes those specific proposals, all citizens deserve to know where their elected lawmakers stand.

Unfortunately, there’s a good chance many Oklahomans won’t be able to find out what position their legislators take — because those lawmakers will refuse to vote.

In a recent column, Rep. Jason Murphey, R-Guthrie, highlighted this problem. Under current rules, lawmakers who are present during a vote are still allowed to “duck the vote completely by simply walking out of the chamber and refusing to vote at all. This deprives the constituents from holding their legislator accountable.”

Those who refuse to vote are simply recorded as “excused.”

Murphey recalled watching one of his House colleagues engage in this farce in an especially glaring fashion in a past session. A bill dealing with agency director salaries was on the board. The measure was opposed by agency heads. Murphey said he watched an unnamed colleague “slowly walk back to the voting box only to react with apparent feigned disgust when the vote was closed before he could register his vote.” That colleague then looked up at an agency head in the House gallery and received “an exaggerated and enthusiastic gesture of appreciation” from the agency director.

This isn’t a new problem. Just glance at voting records from practically any day of any session, and you’ll find a wide range of questionable examples of lawmakers missing votes. On March 7, 2017 at 4:17 p.m., only two House members were recorded as absent for a House vote. By 4:44 p.m., just 27 minutes later, suddenly 12 members were missing. Late-night sessions that run until 10 p.m. or later generally provide even more glaring examples. Several dozen lawmakers may miss any number of votes, only to reappear at random points of the evening.

Not all instances of vote-walking involve lawmakers bowing to outside pressure. Many instances involve simple laziness. Lawmakers aren’t interested in the bills being debated, so they don’t bother to show up and vote.

But every year there are “minor” bills that are later determined to have major consequences. Oklahomans deserve to have their elected representative on the job unless there are valid reasons for an absence — such as illness or a family emergency. While some lawmakers do run into such understandable obstacles each year, their number is far less than the number of lawmakers walking a vote on any given day.

Murphey argues legislative rules should be updated to include modern technology that allows a legislator to vote, no matter where he or she is located at the time. Yet this could lead to lawmakers allowing others to cast votes for them in secret, which isn’t ideal either.

This appears an area where public shaming and voter pressure are needed. Voters should demand to know why their elected representative or senator failed to vote on numerous bills. Politicians should have to defend not only the votes they cast each year, but those they don’t.

In the end, legislators are paid to do one thing — vote yes or no on bills. And this year, more than most, Oklahomans deserve to see exactly where their lawmakers stand.