A Brief History of Recorded Voting
After days of contentious negotiations, the Senate passed the third coronavirus relief package last night by a vote of 96-0. Because of concerns over their members traveling back to Washington, D.C., House leaders have floated the possibility of passing the $2 trillion-dollar bill without a recorded vote. Specifically, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has expressed a preference for enacting it either by unanimous consent or through an unrecorded voice vote. Some have expressed concerns over this, arguing that a recorded vote on a measure of this magnitude should be required so voters can hold them electorally accountable.
History of Recored Voting
In a working book manuscript with Michael Lynch, we track the origins and evolution of recorded voting. Recorded voting is specified by the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, Article 1, Section 5, Clause 3 states: “Each House shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may in their judgment require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the members of either house on any question shall, at the desire of one fifth of those present, be entered on the journal.”
While delegates at the Constitutional Convention spent very little time on legislative rules, the yeas and nays clause represented a notable exception. It was debated in a fairly lively manner, reflective of problems stemming from overuse during the Congress of the Confederation. Some delegates, like Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, supported having any individual request the yeas and nays without the necessity of a sufficient second (as was done under the Articles of Confederation). Others, like Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts, favored eliminating the requirement altogether. Gorham feared it would lead to "…stuffing the Journals with [votes] on frivolous occasions," and "…misleading the people, who never know the reasons determining the votes.” The one-fifth sufficient second proved to be a useful balance between the two positions.
Battles over the need to balance positions like Morris’s, who argued the yeas and nays were the key for voters looking to hold members accountable and that of Gorham’s, who feared they would mislead voters and promote inefficiency and gridlock, frequently occur in Congressional history. Minority parties often employed the yeas and nays clause as a mechanism to delay and frustrate majorities. Many former Speakers of the House shared the view of Thomas Brackett Reed, R-Maine, that “[t]he flagrant abuse of [the yeas and nays clause] of the Constitution goes far to justify [the] desire to have it stricken out altogether.”
However, as we demonstrate in the manuscript, the sufficient second requirement was often an effective tool for leaders to use to deny requests for roll call votes coming from more ideologically extreme members. Travel to and from the capitol was often onerous, and producing a sufficient second was difficult for many members. Using a new dataset on amendments to landmark legislation, we show that the percentage of amendments subjected to failed yeas and nays requests was significant in early 20th century congresses.
Percentage of Amendments Subjected to Failed Vote Requests, 1905-1980
As the figure above demonstrates, the sufficient second clause is no longer an effective mechanism for preventing recorded vote requests. This, we argue, is due to a combination of factors, including improved travel, the passage of institutional reforms promoting recorded voting and electoral competitiveness. As a result, the usage of recorded voting has increased sharply throughout congressional history.
House Roll Call Votes, 1789-2014
Electoral Accountability
The figure above suggests that Gorham’s concerns over roll call voting being abused and used to “mislead” the public have some merit. Especially when we consider the drop in public laws enacted per Congress. Indeed, as we and others have demonstrated, the bulk of recorded votes occur on procedural matters and measures not enacted into public law (frequently dubbed “position-taking votes”). In short, the contemporary Congress casts thousands of recorded votes, overloading voters with information. This makes it nearly impossible for the public to track the positions of their members.
Moreover, campaigns have a great deal of legal leeway when it comes to tying the substance of a vote to an issue. Not surprisingly, they take frequent advantage of this. The website PolitiFact checked the accuracy of the 243 statements and advertisements referencing a politician’s voting record and reported that just over half of them could be classified as “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire.”
Coronavirus Relief in the House
So what does this mean for House consideration of the third coronavirus relief package? First, it suggests the utility provided by recorded voting may be overstated. It is difficult to digest the enormous number of recorded votes cast in the contemporary Congress. In modern politics, voters can also turn to other sources for information on their member’s attitudes on a question like “coronavirus relief.” Public statements and speeches on legislation can easily be obtained via social media and contemporary news sources.
Second, it demonstrates that Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., are certainly not the first leaders to try and bypass a roll call vote. As we have demonstrated in other work, the prevalence of measures passing by unrecorded voice vote has dropped over time. However, passing legislation via unrecorded voice vote is not without recent precedent, even on controversial measures.
As the Constitutional Convention debate demonstrates, the tension over balancing the electoral accountability and efficiency concerns stemming from recorded voting is nothing new. In his book on Legislative Procedure, Robert Luce stated this need for balance succinctly: “If all legislators were wise and honest, able and sincere, the Yeas and Nays would be a useless, harmful encumbrance. If all were shift and self-seeking, stupid and dishonest, the Yeas and Nays might be the shield of society.”