Capitol Ideas calls it a "long-standing Senate practice." I have another name - unethical. I'm referring to "ghost voting," an unhealthy tradition in which some lawmakers will vote for others who are far too important to be in chambers, doing what they're paid to do. It's been criticized, here and elsewhere, as unethical, fraught with the potential for abuse.Just a few years ago, ghost voting was the norm in both houses of the Pennsylvania legislature. Tim Potts, who then headed reform organization DemocracyRisingPa, derided a system that permitted lawmakers to do their job from the local country club. "They're on golf courses, they're in restaurants, they're playing poker in the basements of lobbyists offices. It's a fraud on the people they represent, and it's a fraud on all the taxpayers in Pennsylvania who are paying for them."
In 2006, this practice was finally eliminated in the state house, but thrives in the senate, where Lisa Boscola was trying to beat an incoming thunderstorm and was on her way out of the land of midnight payraises. She had directed a senate Democratic leader to cast her vote with the Republicans on some budget vote, but he must have forgotten about it or something.
That's when Tropical Storm Lisa hit the senate floor, angrily confronting Democratic leaders who had refused to allow her to ghost vote with the Republicans, damn it! She apparently made a passionate appeal over her right to abuse the system and vote in absentia just like numerous other Senators who were AWOL, too. But any legislator unable to vote for herself, especially on a budget stalemate, is unworthy of her office. The public has a right to expect a state senator who casts her own votes. Instead of screaming about senate leaders trying to pull a fast one on her, the entire senate should be condemned for pulling a fast one on the public.
