Political ads about legislators voting with/against their party X% of the time

glennmagusharvey

The following issues have a common theme:

* "Joe Smith is an indepedent voice for Nevadans in Washington.  He voted against his party 46% of the time."
* "Amy Jones is a rubber stamp for majority leader Bob Brown; she voted the party line 98% of the time."

First, independence of thought does not necessarily mean voting in or out of lockstep with one's party's line.

Second, good legislation and good governance do not necessarily result from independence of thought.

Third, those numbers frequently don't differentiate between counts that include lots of routine procedural votes. or just final votes on bills, or final votes on bills and amendments, or just votes on controversial bills/amendments.  Not to mention that this somehow means that a vote against one's party line on a relatively unimportant issue can suddenly be numerically equivalent (under this method of counting) to a vote with one's party line on a much more important issue.

So, the next time you hear a candidate or campaign ad saying something like this, you ought to know that this is mostly bull.  The BEST it can do is, if it's a candidate saying this about himself/herself or someone supporting the candidate saying this, indicate that the candidate is willing to work with the other side to get things done.  When it shows up in an attack ad against a candidate, however, it usually means jack shit.

LouieW

Third, those numbers frequently don't differentiate between counts that include lots of routine procedural votes. or just final votes on bills, or final votes on bills and amendments, or just votes on controversial bills/amendments.  Not to mention that this somehow means that a vote against one's party line on a relatively unimportant issue can suddenly be numerically equivalent (under this method of counting) to a vote with one's party line on a much more important issue.

Yeah, I think this is a really crucial point since voting on whether to make the week prior to Thanksgiving "National Farm-City Week" is a lot different than voting on say the health care bill.

On a related note, while I am not an expert on this, from what I can tell, members of Congress and most other U.S. legislative bodies really have to compromise to get most anything done. While some of those compromises may just be between far right and center right or far left and center left groups, I still think that it is a bit odd to either say that politicians never compromise today or that compromise is inherently bad.

I can sympathize with the idea that sticking to your principles is good, but voting no on tons of basic procedural motions just to make a political point does not seem to fall under that category for me.

glennmagusharvey

One has to be open to compromise, but that doesn't mean that compromise is the best solution either, and a good policymaker/legislator ought to aim for the best solutions and try to get to them using the tools he/she has, which include negotiation as well as standing ground.

glennmagusharvey

Also, another result of all this is the "catch and release" tactic.  This is where the party leadership lets members in tough districts alternate with each other on voting against the party line.  While this sounds dirty, I am not sure whether this actually results in worse (or even better) policy, though I am not a polisci student and don't know of studies on this.

(Not to mention that one would be hard-pressed to come up with a good objective standard for quality of legislation.)

So the only real result of catch-and-release would be to further muck up the whole voted-X%-with/against-party count.

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Oh, this is on top of other questions about the role of elected lawmakers: Should they stick to their own principles, even when these are unpopular to their constituencies?  Should they stick to campaign pledges even when circumstances might demand that they reasonably yield?  Should they do what their constituents want even if they think it's a bad idea?  etc.

captainbrass

This sort of advert would never work in the British system because the party machines have a much stronger control over who gets to be a parliamentary candidate and the parliamentary leadership has much more control over the party machines. Most MPs vote with their party on most issues - if they didn't, they wouldn't stay MPs long.

Actually, that is one of the root problems of British politics.

Nyktos

Yeah, it's the same way in Canada. It's one of the only things I like better about American politics.

LouieW

glennmagusharvey,
One has to be open to compromise, but that doesn't mean that compromise is the best solution either, and a good policymaker/legislator ought to aim for the best solutions and try to get to them using the tools he/she has, which include negotiation as well as standing ground.

I think you are right about that too. Compromising for the sake of compromise seems ill-advised to me, especially since a straight-down-the-middle compromise (if it even exists) can often make little to no sense. For example, if one side supports a program and the other side is against it, a compromise that creates the program but gives barely any funding to it does not make much sense to me.

captainbrass/Nyktos,

Only being used to the American system, I naturally dislike those kinds of systems. Still, I think there are some reasons to prefer the American one, if only because underdog candidates (i.e. ones not favored by the party elites) can and do win elections in the U.S.

Of course, I guess there are some clear disadvantages to not having strong party control in that individual politicians may have no real incentive to work together to get elected.

glennmagusharvey

Well part of the reason we don't have as strong party control is that that ties in with both the fact (1) how U.S. political parties are more broad-based coalitions than single-platform parties that are more notable in parliamentary systems, so they're more like the multi-party governing coalitions in these latter systems, and (2) first-past-the-post voting encourages people to vote for consensus picks rather than more extreme but less electable candidates.

Nyktos

Coalition governments aren't common in Canada or the UK, though, even though we have parliamentary systems. Both countries more or less have three-party systems.

glennmagusharvey

That's something i haven't yet figured out; why have they evolved 3-party systems while the U.S. evolved a 2-party system?