California State Assemby incident highlights little-known practice of "ghost-voting"

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

California lawmakers routinely violate their own law and cast votes for colleagues who aren't there.

Although the practice of "ghost voting" in the state Assembly is usually harmless, experts say it is fraught with the potential for mischief, and at times ghost votes have decided the outcome of potentially far-reaching legislation.

In the most recent case to surface, eyewitnesses said that in May, Assemblyman Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, cast a ghost vote for Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi, D-Castro Valley - opposite the way she would have voted. "I don't recall it, but I don't deny it, either," de Leon said.

De Leon's ghost vote on AB 2818, a measure concerning the state's affordable housing crisis, was first disclosed in The Chronicle's Insight Section on Sunday. Assembly Democrats will examine the episode, said a spokesman for assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles.

Ghost voting occurs when one assembly member pushes a button on the desk of an absent member, electronically casting the vote. The practice is clearly against the Assembly's long-standing written rule that states, "A member may not operate the voting switch of any other member."

Nevertheless, lawmakers often violate the rule, acknowledged Jon Waldie, the Chief Administrative Officer for the Assembly Rules Committee. "It is not uncommon for somebody to be pressing somebody else's button," he said. "It's darn near a daily occurrence." Although it is forbidden, there is no explicit penalty for violators, he said.

Public interest advocates and experts criticized the practice.

"It's kind of shocking that something like that could happen. It's like letting somebody vote twice," said Christina Lokke, a policy advocate with California Common Cause. "It's unethical for someone else to vote for a colleague."

Carmen Balber of the Los Angeles-based Consumer Watchdog organization said, "Lawmakers aren't really doing the jobs that people elected them to do" if they are not casting their own votes.

Most state legislatures prohibit ghost voting, according to Peggy Kerns, director of Center for Ethics in Government at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver. Whenever someone votes for someone else, there is a chance that a wrong vote will be cast, accidentally or intentionally, she said.

"The opportunity for misuse is quite great," said Kerns, a former Colorado legislator, adding, "The public's expectation is that their elected legislator casts their own votes."