Congressional Transparency

Given that we live in a republic we have representatives who work for us representing our interests in our state capitals as well as in Washington DC. They vote on laws that affect our daily lives and the future of our states and country. We vote every few years to decide if they should stay in office or be replaced by someone else. I realized the other day that as with everything if you can't measure a reps voting record it is hard to decide whether you think they are doing a good job or not.

Now, most votes are a matter of public record. You can find out who voted how for most laws. The exception is for voice votes where the bill passes or fails based on whether the "ayes" sound louder than they "nays" (yeah, that is a thing). In those cases no individual record is kept of who voted how. Anyway, overall we can know how everyone voted.

However, the laws that are passed these days, especially on the federal level are almost all massive and hugely complicated tomes. It is not uncommon for them to be hundreds of pages long. Some are even more than 1000 pages. In those cases it becomes significantly harder to understand clearly which way you would even want your senator to vote. There are probably things you like about the bill, but almost certainly at least a few things you don't. So how do you know if your representative is voting in line with your convictions? Maybe they voted the way you think they should have, but for very different and conflicting reasons? Maybe they didn't understand the bill anymore than you did and they were guessing or only following instructions from party leadership. That isn't good. But how do you know?

I propose two things. First, make every vote a vote of record. Hold representatives accountable for their votes.

Second, I would like representatives to write opinions like the supreme court does. When the supreme court makes a decision they have a majority opinion (the court's official ruling) as well as the dissenting opinion (why the dissenting judges disagree). Senators and congressmen/congresswomen should write opinions on each vote explaining why they voted the way they did. What went into their decision and what they liked and disliked about the bill. That would help their fellow representatives to know how they might encourage a future bill to pass in the case of a no vote. It would help congress work better together.

Most importantly, for the people they could see what the concerns were and make a more refined judgement of the vote. It would help them decide whether their representatives reasoning fell in line with their values. It would show potential holes and weaknesses in the representatives arguments. It would hold them to account.