South Carolina’s Shifting Public Record
In an effort to “save money,” for the first time this year the S.C. General Assembly is not producing a printed record of its Official Journal.
This means that the “official public record” of our government will be available only in electronic form – on the Internet.
While we’re obviously in favor of saving money, this development hasn’t been without its unintended consequences.
Specifically, it’s become incredibly easy for votes to be changed without the public knowing it – a frightening prospect in a representative democracy.
This controversy reached a fever pitch at the S.C. State House yesterday after it was revealed that freshman Senator Shane Martin’s vote on a critical budget amendment was changed in the official journal – and changed without a public, unanimous consent request being made to reflect the fact that the public record had been altered.
Although we don’t agree with Senators and Representatives being allowed to change their votes after the fact, there is a process for doing so that preserves the sanctity of the public record.
Specifically, they have to inform their colleagues publicly of their desire to have their vote changed – and their colleagues must agree to that request.
Votes cannot simply be changed – or can they?
FITS has submitted several questions to the S.C. Senate Clerk’s Office in an effort to get down to the bottom of what happened, but we’re hearing that this after-the-fact “vote changing” is a common occurrence in both chambers.
In fact, we’re hearing one of the S.C. House of Representative’s most influential members changed his vote on a key budget amendment, as well.
Stay tuned …
Comments
By Liberty For Me on May 14th, 2009 at 11:16 am
This needs to be stoped immediately!!
By Ron on May 14th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Liberty for Me,
Mega dittos friend. Vote changing should be strictly against the rules in both houses. I can understand in the “people’s house” where C. Chellis was the chairman of the rules committee which fostered the “anthing goes” environment or “no harm no foul” scenario. In an age where the “progressive thought” is that there “are no absolutes”, I suppose that we shouldn’t be surprised when our governmnent becomes a reflection of “societal norms”. Sad but true. So in the “peoples house” led by Rino B. Harrell, it’s understandable, but in the SC Senate where General McConnell and Andre Bauer are in charge, THIS IS EXTREMELY SHOCKING NEWS!! The deliberative SC Senate should certainly enforce a rule that allows for no vote changing. Understandably there may be occasions where a senator would request to add possibly a statement offering his or her rationale for voting a certain way and do so with the consent of the Senate body. I think that generally speaking this does not foster the peoples’ trust of their state government to say the least!