Payback for no-show legislators
Politicians who don’t vote on important bills don’t win.

The following Op-Ed commentary by Carmen Balber was published in the
Los Angeles Times on Sunday, June 18th, 2006. Balber is a consumer advocate at the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. Website: http://www.ConsumerWatchdog.org
————–

You may have seen the political ads this season.

"When Assemblyman Jerome Horton isn’t voting for the tobacco companies… Jerome Horton is just not voting."

Horton, an Inglewood Democrat, has the worst voting record in the Assembly, and after receiving that campaign mailer, voters rejected him in his June 6 primary race for the state Board of Equalization.

"Dutra missed an astonishing 39.2% of all failed bills in the Assembly."

John Dutra, a former Democratic Assemblyman from Fremont, ran third in the
primary for an East Bay state Senate seat after this mailer and a TV ad alerted voters to his voting record.

The seventh-worst voting record in the Assembly helped lose a state Senate primary for George Nakano, a former Democratic Assembly member from Torrance. The mailer against him read: "George Nakano doesn’t show up. And we lose."

Missing some votes in the Legislature may not seem like a big deal on the surface, but in each of these hotly contested races, it was a decisive factor.

The fact is that failing to vote in the Legislature is more serious than it sounds. Most of the time it’s not an issue of laziness or irresponsibility; it has a more sinister aspect. It tends to happen on controversial bills on which deep-pocket interest groups line up against consumer or environmental protections — the kind of legislation that is overwhelmingly popular with the public but that raises the hackles of big-money contributors such as oil companies or auto dealers.

Bills like these put legislators in a bind. If they vote yes, they alienate their big donors; if they vote no, they alienate voters. Not voting seems like a way out, and as a result, the practice has become an epidemic. But don’t be fooled. In the end, a politician’s "nonvote" functions as a "no" and often ends up killing an important bill at the behest of special interests.

For instance, nonvoting killed a proposal that would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to homeowners simply for using their insurance. The bill was prompted by 2003 wildfire victims who were dropped by their insurance companies after they filed claims because their homes were destroyed. Dutra, Horton and Nakano, who together accepted a total of $126,605 in insurance industry contributions between 2003 and 2004, were present but did not vote on the plan.

Last month, seven members of the Assembly "took a walk" and killed a bill by Assemblywoman Wilma Chan (D-Alameda) to ban the sale of "junk" health insurance in California. The bill, AB 2281, failed to pass by just three votes. It would have protected consumers from financial disaster in the case of serious illness — people like Dana Christensen, who, after her husband died of bone cancer, was left with nearly half a million dollars in medical bills because their insurance did not cap out-of-pocket costs.

The health insurance industry, the bill’s loudest opponents, had given the seven nonvoters more than $125,000 since 2005. Their failure to vote stopped the bill, even though none of them, in the official tally, voted against the measure.

A 2004 study by graduate students in the public policy school at USC found that nonvoting was the deciding factor in the defeat of more than one-third of the bills during the legislative session studied. Democrats were far more likely to take a walk than members of the minority GOP — 32% to 13.5% — which is probably why, though California has rules requiring legislators to vote, the Democrats who control the two houses of the Legislature don’t enforce them.

The public called for a crackdown on nonvoting when those going to the polls decided that several serial nonvoters shouldn’t hold public office at all. One way to solve the problem is with a simple rule: Politicians should be docked a day’s pay for every time they show up but refuse to do their job.

Then we’ll see how quickly the votes start rolling in.