Joan Barron: Engaging the Public in Legislative Votes

CHEYENNE – The Wyoming Legislature has made significant progress from the era of typewriters, cranky copiers and bills written by private corporate lawyers or government agencies.

The biggest and best step was the creation of the Legislative Service Office (LSO) and its staff, plus the introduction of computers.

The creation of the LSO allowed our citizen legislators to finance their own bills with the help of legal researchers and lawyers. This is democracy at work.

In the 1980s, there was a movement to install an electronic voting system in the House of the Legislature.

With approximately sixty members, roll-call votes were considered too time-consuming.

House leaders opposed this, pointing out that then-House Chief Secretary Herb Pownall was so good and fast at counting votes that an electronic system was not needed.

The Senate, with approximately thirty members, was not intended to need an electronic voting system, given the shorter and faster roll-call votes.

Today, decades later, the Legislature has a combination electronic voting system that is consistent with other smaller legislative chambers, according to LSO staff and Internet sources.

This type of voting system takes the responsibility of traditional verbal voting with the technology of electronic voting software, which streamlines the tabulation and reporting of votes.

The Legislature’s Select Committee on Legislative Facilities, Technology and Process recently voted in favor of a system that would display roll call votes in real time, perhaps through a new website link. The vote was a compromise to the original proposal for a display board in the legislative chambers.

The amendment for the change came from two committee members: Republican Reps. Dalton Banks, R-Cowley, and Dan Lausen, R-Powell.

They spoke about the need for greater transparency in legislative measures to keep the public aware and informed.

The idea is that real-time voting on a website brings the viewer closer to the actual action as it happens.

But in my opinion, votes on bills are now easily and quickly available on the LSO web page and the real-time system does nothing more than click up for a few minutes for a viewer.

But then I have a different perspective. I covered the legislature before the computer age, when just obtaining a copy of a ballot was a challenge.

And that’s why, for me, the LSO website provides almost all the information I need, quickly, if not in real time.

Despite all this push for greater transparency, nothing was said during the committee meeting about recording votes on bills in the committee of the whole, the meeting of the House of Representatives or the Senate to discuss bills reported from committees.

The process appears sacrosanct as a vestige of the English system that used it to loosen the boundaries of debate and allow a more open exchange of views “without the urgency of a final vote,” according to internet sources.

In Wyoming, it’s informal: Members go in and out of the chambers as the bill’s authors make their arguments.

The voices are verbal calls for yes or no; the responsible legislator decides which side is louder.

A member who disagrees may request a roll call vote.

But the other bills could die for uncertain reasons and if there is no recorded vote to show who voted for and against.

Many bills die in the committee of the whole, and that probably should happen as part of the malpractice system.

But that English relic may also need transparency.

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Contact Joan Barron at 307-632-2534 or jmbarron@bresnan,net

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Mea culpa: A few weeks ago I denied the Newcastle Journal access to a video of a Weston County commissioners meeting.