Thank God for Cindi Ross Scoppe.
She first gave us South Carolina voters the charge “to not only expect more but demand more” from our legislature and to express our demands to them so that they will do what’s right instead of what’s demanded by the “moneyed minority.” Now she’s given us the method by which to hold our legislature accountable for their actions:
My proposal: Let’s make it an acknowledged understanding — no, a House or Senate rule, or even a law — that a legislator will be counted as having voted in the majority on an unrecorded vote unless he or she puts a statement in the Journal to the contrary.
The beauty of this is that we don’t have to worry about drawing a line that fits every occasion; once they figure out how much trouble it is to keep up with every vote they might not want to be seen as supporting, legislators will do that for us, by calling for a lot more recorded votes.
We must find out where our legislators stand on H-3588 and on other bills. We can’t let good bills like H-3588 be stuck in committee forever while our legislators tell us they’d vote for these bills if they ever came to the floor.
Our legislature is accountable to us. It’s not the other way around.
