Members of the House of Representatives routinely vote for each other.
The Minnesota House’s hours-long floor sessions are often mundane and monotonous, the chamber regularly half full at best. But when members get to voting on an amendment or a bill, the chamber suddenly looks as bustling as a bee hive.
Members press the green and red voting buttons at their desks to cast a “yes” or “no” vote. But some of them aren’t just recording their own vote. Many stretch, lean over and press the voting buttons for their seatmates, who are gone.
Then, a handful get out of their seats to make sure all the empty seats around them have a vote cast.
Where are the missing members? And why are they surrendering their vote to their seatmates?
Which is technically a violation of the rules, but hey, rules are for peasants.
The reps involved have their, er, reasons:
House members say voting for one another is a longstanding practice and no cause for alarm — though it’s technically against the rules.
House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, doesn’t believe the practice compromises the legitimacy of the vote.
Walter Hudson goes into the reason behind the reason:
This – the serious work being argued out behind closed doors by the Governor, Speaker and Senate Majority leader, has been a problem since at least the early years of the Dayton regime, if not longer.
The Pandemic made it worse; the state was in effect run by a junta, and the Legislature was of no more use than the Supreme Soviet.
That’s something for a future, good government to fix, if we ever get one.
So, the GOP representatives react to the reality of a one party rule and they’re still bad people. Perhaps if the GOP fought like the TN Three or Zooey and the MT Trannies? I’d approve of that.
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Don’t Minnesota Democrats routinely vote in lock-step with whatever the comrades at DFL Central Committee decide? Rather than having all of them appear to cast votes, they could simply have one apparatchik cast the votes for all of them, result would be the same.
If they’d switch to using Dominion voting machines in the legislature, they wouldn’t even need that. Just tell the programmer to switch Republican votes to Democrat votes as needed and they could all stay home. Save a fortune on per diems.
Cut salary, per diem, and housing reinbursements if not in attendance and see who shows up.
Change the voting system to require a “smartcard” or something similar. Require that smartcard for access and egress from the voting floor. Keep track of the use of the cards.
I was working a support case for Canadian Parliament. They have an App for MPs to vote on a mobile device. Don’t need to be present, but can still vote. This was a Covid measure.