No Secret Ballots or Voting. All votes from Congress, Senate or any other elected official should be made available to the public ESPECIALLY their constituents.
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All Congressional votes already are either voice vote or recorded vote. Recorded “roll call” votes are already public and open record (The House votes electronically with a set time limit, the Senate actually calls the roll of each Senator and the Senator will announce their vote to the clerk). You can even watch them on C-Span.
For example the roll call vote for the Continuing Resolution that passed today can be found at:
In the case of a voice vote (the “ayes” and “nays” in the House, or “Unanimous Consent” in the Senate) there is no recorded record of who voted for or against, but it only takes a small minority to call for a recorded vote in either chamber.
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How was the new speaker voted in-secret recently?
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We elect these officials to act on our behalf, just like any other job your boss has the ability to review your work; to physically look at your work. Our elected officials should not be any different. There needs to be accountability. I want to see what actions, decisions, and choices they are making on my behalf.
This information should be easily accessible through a government website and also on the elected officials website.
It is time for us, the people, to be more involved and more educated on the process. For to many years we have not educated ourselves on this process and the government has taken complete advantage of the ignorance and disinterest in the process of our government actions.
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I think I understand your confusion - for Constitutionally mandated leadership, it is very open and transparent:
The Speaker of the House is voted in by a roll call vote as the first order of business in January - the parties have selected their nominees (although as we saw with the past couple of Speaker votes, the party may split internally and put up a challenger, leading to multiple rounds of votes).
The President of the Senate is elected by we the people, which is also the Vice President of the United States. As it is largely a ceremonial position in comparison to the Speaker of the House (although the President of the Senate will preside over major legislation and obviously break ties), there is a President Pro Tempore that presides over the day to day business - it is typically the senior-most member of the Majority Party, which means Chuck Grassley of Iowa will likely resume that position in January from Patty Murray of Washington.
Beyond that, the remaining positions are party level positions, including the Majority/Minority Leaders and Whips. Being the political parties are not official Government agencies, nor are defined in the Constitution, they are not subject to the open meetings that the House and Senate must preside under.
Party level positions are very much “smoky back room” deals, using secret ballots and campaigning, In fact, much of this countries history prior to the early to mid-20th Century used these kind of back room deals at the state level to choose a candidate for President (although the naming of Kamala Harris as a “substitute” for Joe Biden after the primaries seemed much like a similar back room deal).
The recent vote that I believe you are referring to is the Majority Leader - essentially who the Majority Party says will be spokesperson for the party and set the direction of the Party. With the incoming Republican Majority, and the decision by Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to step aside from that Role, the party met to name a successor. After a couple of secret ballots, the party named John Thune of South Dakota to serve as their Leader.
Could the parties be more open and transparent about who they choose for party leadership? Sure. Would they? Not a chance. It would take a law for them to be open, and they’re not going to inflict that on themselves, and even then you’re potentially running afoul of the First Amendment (I’m not a Constitutional Lawyer, so take this opinion for what it’s worth).
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That already exists, the problem is we the people are not consuming that information to properly make informed decisions.
Welcome to congress.gov, the US Government’s official source for all legislative business. For example, I can look at the “Continuing Resolution” that was passed to keep the Government running:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/10545
If I go to the “actions” section, I can see each of the major milestones that the bill went through, including the roll-call votes in both chambers - after each roll call, there is a link to the clerk’s webpage where you can see how each member voted.
So, for example, in the House, my Representative, Pat Fallon of Texas did not vote. In the Senate both John Cornyn and Ted Cruz voted in favor of the Continuing Resolution.
The problem lies in that with hundreds if not thousands of bills passed every session, who has time to search through and parse how they voted on each and every vote. That’s where independent groups have stepped in to aggregate those votes on hot button issues so you can focus at an issue level how they voted. I’m not going to name any here, but they do exist.
Exactly. Our public education system has almost completely written off Civics which means many of the younger generation are willfully unaware of how the machine that is our Government operates and will, like sheep just follow the masses.
There’s a reason services like C-Span and congress.gov exist. But we need people to use them for what they’re worth, and be more informed in what’s going on that impacts our day-to-day lives.
And for goodness (and Country) sake, Civics should be a graduation requirement in schools.
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Micheal,
I can see you are very well versed in this particular field and you have flooded me with more information than I care to resolve with. Thank you for providing the links and the many paragraphs of summary.
This is also a point about government and the processes that lie within. It is to complicated and some might say that is the point to hide what is actually being done.
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Perhaps we might add: No voting merely “Present”. What does that mean – I came for the vote but I just sat there and watched? Seems a bit foolish on its face, but then again, it allows cover for congresspersons to hide behind when their desires are contrary to their constituants, right?
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There are places where it might be appropriate for voting “present” - for example if the person has a conflict of interest, by voting present they say “I’m here for consideration of a quorum, but my vote will not affect the outcome, since I might be affected by that outcome” It’s much like the Supreme Court when there’s a conflict of Interest, the justice will announce it at the grant (essentially saying I’m here, but will not be hearing the case) and then stepping down from the bench when oral arguments are heard.
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Understood. Thanks for clearing that up. I should have looked it up, but my fingers were already in motion. Thx Michael! 
Again Micheal,
I appreciate your knowledge and possibly experience and background in this subject - but I think you are missing the point entirely. The point is accountability and situation such as you are describing are creating “grey” areas or “exceptions”: this is exactly how loop holes are found or “ways around”. Again - elected officials are there to vote for the will of the people not their own self interest.
And I don’t want to know that they were just present to vote. I want to know how they voted, because if they are not voting how their constituents want them to they need to be take out of office and replaced with someone that vote based on the will of the people.
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Let me throw out this hypothetical, and see how you would handle it -
Member of Congress owns stock in a major corporation. A bill is brought to the floor that if passed could benefit that major corporation, leading to that Member of Congress getting a large financial windfall and the vote is going to be close. Constituents in the District have been vocal on both sides of the bill.
If said Member of Congress has filed their ethics disclosures properly, the public should already be aware of their stake in the major corporation.
This to me is a perfect example of a vote “present” - especially since a vote “present” also decreases the threshold to majority (so 1 person voting “present” lowers the requirement from 218 to pass down to 217, whereas not voting at all doesn’t change that threshold).
Of course in the above hypothetical, the real answer would be that all Members of Congress shall put all investments in a blind trust for the duration of their time in office, but that’s a discussion for another thread.
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It happens often, but they go ahead and vote to their financial benefit.
And all the more reason to see their voting record.
Better still is no secret bills. Require that all bills Congress is voting on be made available to the public at least 7 days before the vote. There is not one single reason not to do this these days, other than they want to keep their ability to hide things from us and pass garbage bills loaded with wasteful special interest spending.
Thanks for trying but it seem like some people do not want to do the “work” and want to be spoon fed their information. It’s all out there. It’s also a lack of effective Civics education in the school system. Although AI might be the solution to their problem, at this point, due to programmer bias, I would not put much belief in the accuracy of the results. You also taught me a reason for the “Present” vote that make sense to me but it is probably also used by Senators and Representatives who lack the spine to take a position, especially right before an election.
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And then, we’ll know who’s who!!!
Although I agree with your assessment as to why the vote for majority leader was secret, I still feel that every decision that my elected representative makes should be open to public inspection.
If that takes an amendment to the Constitution to get there then so be it.
I can see the logic in a secret vote because these people still have to work with each other, and knowing the senator X did not vote for you could be cause for retribution. But there again, I want EVERY DECISION to be made publicly and justified publicly as well.
Isn’t this already done?