Here’s some advice for House Speaker Bobby Harrell of Charleston: Keep it simple.

Harrell’s answer to a call for more recorded votes in the General Assembly includes a double twist that has some lawmakers rightly crying foul.

After a 77-34 vote on changes to the rules and three hours of debate in an organizing meeting Tuesday, roll will now automatically be called in the House for:

• Bills that increase or decrease the salary or benefits for legislators, constitutional officers or judges.

• Budget amendments that spend $10,000 or more.

• New taxes or fees or the reduction of taxes or fees.

• Adoption of the budget.

• Amendments to the Ethics and Accountability Act or the Campaign Finance Act.

Roll will continue to be called for bills that amend the constitution and vetoes issued by the governor, among other requirements already in place.

Reps. Bill Herbkersman of Bluffton, Richard Chalk of Hilton Head Island and Shannon Erickson of Beaufort voted for the rules change. Rep. Kenneth Hodges of Green Pond voted against it.

Adding situations that requireroll call votes certainly is a step in the right direction, but it still falls short of a proposal to record the votes on second reading of all bills and on third and final reading if a bill is amended. The proposal by Rep. Nikki Haley, R-Lexington, also would require a recorded vote on each section of the state budget.

Here’s the double twist: If the House holds a voice vote instead of a recorded vote, every lawmaker will be listed as voting “yes.” To be recorded as voting “no,” members must ask the House clerk to be recorded as such. The only exception applies to members who have notified the clerk that they will not be in the chamber when the vote is taken. (Note that a voice vote apparently never results in turning down a measure if the default vote for an absent member is “yes.” It makes you wonder why they bother with voice votes.)

That’s needlessly complex. It’s wrong to record someone as voting when they were not in the room. That shouldn’t have to be corrected after the fact or accounted for beforehand. Why not just record votes? The House has an electronic voting system to tally the votes of its 124 members. The Senate does it by hand, but has only 46 members. A roll call vote takes an estimated four to five minutes.

The Senate is expected to vote on the matter when the legislature reconvenes in January.

Haley vows to continue to push her bill.

The S.C. Policy Council, which started this debate with its analysis of voting, said the change still would allow lawmakers to pass millions of dollars in pork projects under the radar by not requiring recorded votes on every section of the budget and second reading of bills, along with other steps in the process.

Some have argued that roll call votes are taken for important matters already. No roll call indicates unanimous support and putting in place a requirement for procedural matters would be time-consuming and costly.

Maybe, but it also might reduce the amount of unimportant and unnecessary business taken up by the legislature. (Just read through some of the resolutions introduced and passed by our lawmakers, and you’ll see what we mean.) If lawmakers — who assure us they are very mindful of how they spend our money — stuck to only the most essential business, they wouldn’t waste money recording votes on unnecessary legislation and resolutions.

And we’d know exactly what they were doing up there.

Island Packet
December 5, 2008