How To Keep Track Of Politicians’ Voting Track Records, A Guide

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What’s the point of opening a savings account if you don’t care if the bank is giving you a good interest rate or not. It’s same with electing our political leaders to office — just because you register to vote and cast your ballot it doesn’t mean that you won’t have to keep an eye out on how that man or woman you elected to office is doing. Holding our politicos accountable is what can save or damn the nation and it doesn’t have to be a time consuming task.

What To Look For

Just because you voted Democrat doesn’t necessarily mean that your representative is voting with Democrats all the time. Even though partisanship is what we see mostly, there are times when your elected official will vote with the other side. This happens very often, specially if you elected someone moderate — those are the ones to really keep an eye on because often times they forget who their constituents are and tend to side with special interest groups.

But there is more, here is a list of five things to look for on the voting records of your elected officials:

1) How many YEAS or NAYS they gave to legislation you care about — the environment, LGBT issues, healthcare, the economy, military spending, etc.

2) How many times they missed voting — in other words, was your elected official on a skiing trip while his or her vote could have helped passed legislation you care about?

3) Who are they voting with — are they siding with Republicans most of the time even though they are Democrats or vice-versa?

4) Are they being influenced by PAC groups or other campaign contributors? — A perfect example is Democratic Senator Max Baucus who receives top dollar from pharmaceutical and insurance companies and has been fighting the public option in the healthcare bill. Who are they working for?

5) What’s their rhetoric? — One of the websites below actually keep records of the speeches and public statement your elected official gives to fellow members and the media with transcripts and everything. You want to read these from time to time and see if he or she are actually walking the talk.

Where To Go

The U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate have their own websites where you can check what bills are being voted on, but it can be a nightmare to navigate THOMAS or other government databases. Certainly, they don’t make it easy. Thankfully we have great organizations dedicated to keeping track of how your elected official is voting.

Here are the ones I’ve found to be extremely helpful, if I miss a real good one, let me know.

1) Project Vote Smart (www.votesmart.org)  — This organization is by far the bests at keeping excellent track of how your elected official is voting. The website is simple to navigate and you can get all these great info:

• Voting track record on the issues
• Speeches and public statements
• Interest groups ranking
• Campaign financing
• Issue positions
• Bios
• and more.

2) The Washington Post (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress) — Certainly, the Post is using a great database to keep voting track records. Here is what you will find there:

• Voting track record
• Positions held
• Financial disclosure report
• Key votes record
• Missed votes
• Voting with party
• Latest votes
• Bios
• and more

3) League of Conservation Voters (www.lcv.org) — These folks go out of their way to tell you how members of Congress have voted on environmental issues. They keep a scorecard on each of them and they keep a list, “The Dirty Dozen” that should be voted out in the next election. Here is what you will find:

• Scorecards
• Lists of evildoers
• and more

Keeping Track The Easy Way

Since there are so many elected officials to keep track on from the local to the federal level, I would suggest that you follow these three steps: Start by writing down on a notebook, your diary, or in your computer, the names of key legislation that you cared about the most up to that point (the healthcare bill for example) and note how your elected official in Congress voted.

Then, find out why they voted that way using the Project Vote Smart database and write it down — “she/he felt the time wasn’t right,” “she/he felt that it would hurt business,” “she/he thought it would mean higher taxes,” “she/he thought the legislation would only benefit the rich,” “she/he thought it’s socialism,” etc.

And finally, write he or she a letter, fax, or send an email. You want to either thank them, or express how outraged you are. This step is extremely important because you’re letting your public official know that you are watching her or him. Most of the times these politicians operate assuming no one in the public gives a darn, but you have to remind them that you are indeed keeping track of how they’re doing their job. Think of it as, an employee evaluation — they are working for you and getting paid with your tax dollars.

Follow me on Twitter: @doloresmbernal

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