Madison is Rolling in His Grave

There are those who are heathens to the church. Blasphemers who not only have a lack of faith, but also spew atrocities, words the church would consider lies and evil. There is a such thing as the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, where it is not necessarily required to follow the law word for word, but its original intent. If devotion to the church, ones pious religion, means to adhere to its teachings and rules, then surely the core of our civic religion as a nation would be to follow the Constitution as well as its intent. Not just the words, but what the founding fathers wanted for this nation. But, those in the Texas legislature have spat on that intent. The state representatives and senators who double vote for other elected officials on a floor vote I guarantee you are making Madison, as well as all the other signers of the Constitution, roll over in their grave.

One of the biggest causes of the American Revolution was unequal representation. The colonies were not being represented in the English parliament, so we declared out independence and so on and so forth. We now have a system on the state and federal level where residents of a specific district elect officials or delegates to represent them. One man, one vote. They are elected to vote in Congress according to the wishes of their constituents. One man, one vote. But, we have clear evidence of these “elected officials” doing something entirely different. There is video footage of State Rep Michael Hamilton, who during the HPV vaccination vote back in the early 2000's, voted for himself as well as State Rep Daniel Branch and State Rep Charles Howard and he voted in place of State Rep Wayne Smith. If James Madison was alive today, I swear to God, that man would deck State Rep Hamilton, hard, on the nose.

It is written in the Rules and Precedents of the Texas House for the 81st Texas State Legislature, in Rule 5, Section 47 “Any member found guilty by the house of knowingly voting for another member on the voting machine without that other member’s permission shall be subject to discipline deemed appropriate by the house.” Yet, somehow they get away with it. Even State Rep Debbie Riddle, the one who proposed a bill requiring all voters to show a driver's license in order to be able to vote, has been caught on tape voting more than once. She tries to justify her actions with the coy excuse of doing it out of necessity. “We have a lot of votes, we have a lot of amendments; and there's times when we don't break for lunch, and we don't break for dinner, we don't have bathroom breaks...” she says. Has she no shame? Being a commoner in the Texas populace, I will admit I do not fully understand every nuance of the Legislature, but surely we can all agree a representative should vote only under their name and in accordance to their constituents. Yes, I understand there may be times when a given Representative cannot make it to the House floor to vote on a given bill for some reason or another, but it is not difficult to have an authorized proxy for him/her; an attaché if you will, who has the key to operate his given Representative's desk.

Representative are voted into and out of office based on several factors, and one of the big ones is their voting record. In my district John Somebody is up for reelection, but I cannot accurately decide if I want to vote for him because Joe Otherguy has more than likely illegally voted in his stead. It throws the system out of sync and discards integrity.

Unfortunately, I cannot suggest a true alternative for how to run the floor vote. I am but a commoner, and I do not fully understand how the floor works as well as all the rules. All I can say is State Representatives need and must live by the One Man, One Vote standard.