Groups Urge Hill Leaders To Post Committee Votes Online

16 Apr 2008 // Twenty advocacy groups today urged Congress to require all committees to quickly post recorded roll call votes online. In letters to the top Democrat and Republican in each chamber, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, joined by organizations including the AFL-CIO, the American Civil Liberties Union, Public Citizen and the Sunlight Foundation, urged the House and Senate to improve public access to markup information by amending their rules to force committees to makes roll call results easily accessible online within 24 hours of votes.

House rules mandate markup results be made available for public inspection and the Senate requires committees to put video, audio or transcripts of all meetings online within 21 days. But the groups say markup results only become widely available in reports on legislation voted out of committee, which often take months to appear. The letters note publications, including CongressDaily, charge thousands of dollars for subscriptions that include markup coverage. "Accessing committee votes is difficult for those -- including individuals, nonprofit organizations and small businesses whose interests might be affected by committee votes -- who cannot visit committee offices and who do not have the financial resources to pay private organizations to track this information," the groups said in their letter.