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Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong. ~Richard Armour

With this congressional term well underway I wanted to follow up on a campaign promise and make my entire voting record available to my constituents in the State of Washington, and anyone who wishes to know my positions on the issues:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rUjnTgQ8rV9a1t9qylwWSFA&single=true&gid=1&output=html
(I apologize for the cut and past URL, for some reason the code here will not accept that URL as a link)

The URL above will continue to be regularly updated every few days to keep it as current as possible. If you have any questions about my votes, I strongly encourage you to send me a PM. I give you my word I will do my very best to answer your questions.



To explain the format you will see in this record- I am organizing all votes into weekly groups. Within the week each "type" of vote is grouped together for clarity. At the top of the week are the true substance issues that required a vote. Issues like alliances, mutual protection pacts, infrastructure, taxes, tariffs. These are the issues you should review carefully when looking at any congress member's record.

Next in the list are all the required administrative votes such as moving funds into the treasury. These are non-controversial "bookkeeping" motions that keep our government funded.

And finally come the XP votes, often referred to as "lutz". While there is a lot of public misunderstanding around this category of vote, they are quite easy to understand once you know how congress works. To compensate members of congress for not being able to leave the country to fight and gain experience, each vote a congresswoman casts gains them one XP. Each person in congress is given a maximum of two proposals they may bring before the body politic per term, but there are never 102 necessary motions to place for vote.

Some members chose to use their allotted proposals for a measure that is intended to be voted down and fail, but will give each voter XP. They are not intended to be funny or "lutz", they are written to use up the permitted 2 proposals per Senator per term. There are reasons why some of these will be written during the session, but typically you will see a flurry of them at the end of the month before members leave congress, knowing then they do not need their slots for meaningful legislation.

My door is always open. If you have any questions, come in, have a nice cup of that good Seattle coffee, and let's talk!

--Dania
Congresswoman from Washington

“Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.” -Eleanor Roosevelt

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