Voting record question

So it seems the new latest and greatest ammo on Kerry is his 50% voting record. What I would like to know is, what is normal for our senate and congress members. Is voting on only half of the bills typical, is it higher than most or is it lower than most other politicians.

I haven't started searching on the internet for these statistics yet, I was kinda hoping someone else would already have some information so please share if you do. I'm gonna start looking sometime today and will post any results I'm able to drum up.

My personal opinion is that these politicians are elected for this very purpose, so anything under 90% seems unacceptable to me. Lookout google, here I come.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by imaeditedbysowulo

So it seems the new latest and greatest ammo on Kerry is his 50% voting record. What I would like to know is, what is normal for our senate and congress members. Is voting on only half of the bills typical, is it higher than most or is it lower than most other politicians.

I haven't started searching on the internet for these statistics yet, I was kinda hoping someone else would already have some information so please share if you do. I'm gonna start looking sometime today and will post any results I'm able to drum up.

My personal opinion is that these politicians are elected for this very purpose, so anything under 90% seems unacceptable to me. Lookout google, here I come.

---

Consider how rarely the bastards are in session, anything less than 100% is unacceptable.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by imaeditedbysowulo

My personal opinion is that these politicians are elected for this very purpose, so anything under 90% seems unacceptable to me. Lookout google, here I come.

---

Agreed.

I did some of this awhile ago, and here are a few sites that I used.

http://www.michiganvotes.org/MissedVotes.aspx

http://www.minnesotavotes.org/MissedVotes.aspx

There are similar sites for each of the states. Pretty revealing info.

As far as Kerry is concerned, there are other items like his absence on Intelligence meetings.

http://www.factcheck.org/article241.html

Going back to May, a vote to extend benefits went down by one vote. Guess who was the only Senator to be absent?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,119636,00.html

He also has a horrible record on attending Intelligence Committee meetings, but thats not a vote so I'll leave that out.

However, you have to take all this in context. There are hundreds of votes a year and some publications are only counting votes that belong to a certain topic, like Social issues or defense.

A lot of statistics come from a publication called the "National Journal". Before you can buy what they say though, you have to see how they get to their numbers:

An Unusual Year
The funny thing about 2003 related to what the National Journal does when a legislator misses votes. The Journal used 62 votes to come up with the 2003 rankings, a fairly small number relative to the hundreds of votes a Senator casts in a year. They calculate three different ratings: one for economic policy, one for social policy, and one for foreign policy. These three are then combined to come up with an overall ranking.

But here's the catch: if a Senator misses more than half the votes the Journal uses in any one of these three categories, they don't count any of the votes he makes for that category, using only the remaining categories to calculate his overall score. If you're running for president, as both Kerry and Edwards were in 2003, you miss a lot of votes when you're off in coffee klatches and VFW halls in Iowa and New Hampshire. So Kerry missed 37 of the 62 votes, while Edwards missed 22. Consequently, the National Journal gave Kerry no score for economic or social policy, basing his entire ranking on his score on foreign policy. Edwards, on the other hand, got no score on foreign policy.

*lin*

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jaeger

Consider how rarely the bastards are in session, anything less than 100% is unacceptable.

---

I agree, I was just giving them a 10% leeway to appear as tho I was a kind and understanding type of person.

I've found one decent link, but it requires a lot of clicking and manual calculations. I randomly clicked on 20 different bills from this year, Kerry voted on 3 out of the 20 that I clicked on. Then I clicked on 15 different ones from the year 1993 and found he had voted on all 15. I picked a couple from each month, but none that were on the same day to try to get as random a figure as possible.

Next I clicked on another random 10 bills from 1997 and found that he had voted on all 10 of the ones I picked. Finally, I tried out 13 from 1992. Again, no two issues were from the same day, I tried to spread out the clicks as randomly as possible picking from different months and never two votes that were within a week of each other. He voted on 13 out of 13 issues that I looked at from 1992.

I have come to the conclusion that like almost every other issue being floated out there about Kerry, this 'he only shows up for 50% of the votes' stuff is complete bull****. Not surprising in the least.

All random clicking was done from the following link. Feel free to randomly select some links yourself and good luck coming up with a 50% voting record for Kerry outside of this year when he is on the campaign trail.

http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/leg...sers/votes.htm

Didn't you guys get the Friday memo?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by WebHead

Didn't you guys get the Friday memo?

---

My email is down. :devil:


What did the memo say? Was it about the jello that I took from the company fridge? It had been there all week long and there wasn't a note on it so I figured finders keepers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by imaeditedbysowulo

My email is down. :devil:


What did the memo say? Was it about the jello that I took from the company fridge? It had been there all week long and there wasn't a note on it so I figured finders keepers.

---

It was a declaration from me to not talk serious politic stuffs today and to just have fun since this is the last friday/weekend before the big election. I have declared that we will only joke and be more funner today. And that we should talk trash about the Steelers all day.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by WebHead

It was a declaration from me to not talk serious politic stuffs today and to just have fun since this is the last friday/weekend before the big election. I have declared that we will only joke and be more funner today. And that we should talk trash about the Steelers all day.

---

Whoops, my bad! That's ok, I have to go back to work for the rest of the day anyways so no more political propaganda from me. I'm sick of it all anyways. Lies lies lies lies lies!!!!! Hmmmm, guess I wasn't totally done afterall. That said, now I'm done cuz that is all.

Oh and go Steelers!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by WebHead

And that we should talk trash about the Steelers all day.

---

It can't be...I agree with something Web said? As a fan of the other end of the Turnpike wars, GO BROWNS!

*lin*

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Linthade

It can't be...I agree with something Web said? As a fan of the other end of the Turnpike wars, GO BROWNS!

*lin*

---

Hehe,.. That's the spirit! :thumbs: