Switching Votes

teh
The Illinois legislature passed a budget last night. I know, big yawn. But I forced myself to read the State Journal-Register account hoping to find some interesting nugget to blog about, maybe an outlandish item some lawmaker got into the budget. You know, the pork that gets the pundits all up in arms and proves government just doesn’t work –EVER.

Well, the article wasn’t very specific on the spending items and focused mostly on the politics – Dems were for the budget and the Repubs were against.

But wait!

One Democrat did vote No. And here’s where I found my blogworthy item:

Sen. Louis Viverito of Burbank was the only Democrat to vote "no," but he blamed a malfunctioning voting switch.

A malfunctioning voting switch? If that’s what it was, and not a malfunctioning voting switch user, what does a Senator do? Does he call Senate Support? And what does Support do after they’ve had the Senator reboot his voting switch and his Yes votes are still coming out as No? Do they advise him to vote No when he means Yes until they can get a service ticket written and a technician sent down? Or perhaps the whole Senate must revert to voice vote pending the complete check of the system. I mean, maybe there are other faulty voting switches and some Senators just didn’t notice their votes were being recorded incorrectly.

Of course, a smart politician might not want to do anything about a broken voting switch. Think about it, Senator Viverito can now claim to have both voted FOR the budget and AGAINST it. None of this lame “I voted for it before I voted against it” stuff; he was for it and against it at the same time. Having it both ways was never so easy.