The Thicket at State Legislatures

Webcasting Information Straight to the American Public

by Meagan Dorsch

The buzz surrounding social media picked up during the 2008 Presidential election when candidates from both parties incorporated several Web 2.0 tools into their campaigns. 

Now the Centers for Disease Control and the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services are getting into the act with a Webcast to discuss the 2009 H1N1 Flu (or swine flu) with the American public.  It will take place today at 1:00 EDT.

"At times like this, clear accurate information is one of the most powerful tools we have and we look forward to answering questions and speaking directly to the American people," said Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a press release. "Our administration believes in using new methods to engage the American people and ensure they can speak directly to their public officials.This Webcast is an important part of that effort."

The Webcast can be viewed at www.hhs.gov and www.cdc.gov. 

NCSL Swine Flu Page

Can You Top 1,327 Followers?

by Karl Kurtz

With apologies to Ashton Kutcher and CNN, we wonder which state legislators have the most followers to their Twitter feeds.

NCSL's Pam Greenberg has a list of 50 or so legislators who use the micro blogging capabilities of Twitter to send out 140 word or less updates on their activities. Meagan Dorsch also posted a query about state legislators who tweet on NCSL's Twitter site. That generated a few more names of legislative twitterers. We then looked up each of these legislators to determine which one has the most "followers"—people who subscribe to receive the legislators' tweets.

Far and away the leader among legislators is California state Sen. Chuck DeVore with 2,479 followers. But it turns out that Sen. DeVore is running for the U.S. Senate and that his Twitter page is designed to promote that campaign. Several others on the list were also using Twitter to campaign for other offices. I decided to eliminate those who were campaigning for non-state legislative offices from consideration for top legislative twitterer. Here, in order of the number of followers, is a list of the remaining legislators (at least the ones we know of) with more than 500 followers as of today:

Name		State	Twitter account	Followers
Sen. Dan Patrick		TX	http://twitter.com/DanPatrick	1,327
Speaker Joe Straus		TX	http://twitter.com/SpeakerStraus	901
Sen. Florence Shapiro		TX	http://twitter.com/FlorenceShapiro	818
Del. Jeff Frederick		VA	http://explore.twitter.com/jefffrederick	672
Assy. Fiona Ma		CA	http://twitter.com/fionama	581
Sen. Jolie Justus		MO	http://twitter.com/joliejustus	577
Sen. Mike Kopp		CO	http://twitter.com/senate22	512

Let us know if you are a legislator who is tweeting and can top Sen. Dan Patrick's 1,327 followers. Sen. Patrick has the advantage of being well-known outside his service in the Senate as a broadcaster, television commentator and conservative radio talk show host.

As I browsed through some of the tweets from these legislators, here are a few observations or items that interested or amused me:

Constitution Competition "Threepeat"

By Jan Goehring

East High School in Denver, Colorado won the National Finals of the We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution event this week. It is their third national title in a row; an unprecedented achievement.

Vestavia Hills High School in Vestavia Hills, Alabama took second and Amador Valley High School of Pleasanton, California came in third. More than 1,100 students representing all 50 states and the Northern Mariana Islands participated in the three-day competition in Washington, D.C. Schools must win a state competition to go on to the national finals.

Students spend thousands of hours studying constitutional and historical principles to prepare for the event. The finals are a simulated hearing in which students testify before a panel of judges who ask in-depth questions. The last round of the competition addressed issues of federalism. The event is sponsored by the Center for Civic Education.

Having judged the national finals in the past, I can tell you that the students who participate in this program are amazing. Their passion and excitement about their constitutional studies is inspiring and the intensity of the competition can be felt in every hearing room. Congratulations to all!

John J. Marchi, New York Senator

by Karl Kurtz

Former New York Senator John J. Marchi, 87, died last week.  First elected to the Senate in 1956, he retired from the Legislature in 2006.  At the time of his retirement, he was one of the two longest-serving legislators in the United States.

I had many conversations with Sen. Marchi over the years and often heard him speak.  I can testify to the truth of two comments in The New York Times obituary for him:

The senator...often came across as thoughtful but not an artful phrasemaker....  Mr. Marchi, who loved the classics and could converse about Marcus Aurelius, Ovid and Aristotle, adored the Tuscany of his ancestors.

The photo, from Wikipedia, is of a Staten Island ferry named the Sen. John J. Marchi.

Social Networking Legislators

by Karl Kurtz

At a session on "Social Networking 101" at NCSL's Spring Forum earlier today, Arkansas House Majority Leader Steve Harrelson made his presentation about how he uses a blog, Facebook, and Twitter to communicate with constituents by posting his presentation under the title, "Liveblogging the NCSL Spring Forum," in his blog and projecting the post on the screen:

I'm sitting on a panel to discuss legislative technology and new media, and I've been given 15 minutes to provide a compelling argument as to why public officials should use the Internet to connect to their constituents and provide a running commentary on facing us all. Given the tight schedule, I'm going to hit the highlights and list three main points...

He went on to talk about immediacy, no filters and transparency as the key advantages of social networking for legislators.  It was an excellent presentation.  You can read it for yourself.

Rep. Harrelson's web site/blog, Under the Dome, is one of the most sophisticated ones for a state legislator that I have seen, integrating policy and political news, his Twitter feeds, and a public opinion poll, and making great use of photos (sometimes in fun, as with this photo) and maps.

Rep. Harrelson also featured Arkansas Speaker Robbie Wills' blog, which includes a weekly webcast, this week from the Spring Forum in Washington, D.C.  Speaker Wills also publishes his Twitter feeds on his blog.

Rep. Harrelson said that in addition to providing an effective means of communication with constituents, bypassing the media, other legislators, news media and lobbyists track his and the speaker's social network sites to find out what is going on at the capitol.

An Unexpected Benefit of Term Limits

by Karl Kurtz

States with term limits have higher proportions of former state legislators serving in Congress than states without term limits. The national average of former legislators in Congress is 50.5 percent, ranging from 100 percent (of three seats in the U.S. House and Senate) in Montana and Wyoming to zero percent (of five seats) in New Mexico. But among term-limited states the average is 60.7 percent compared to 46.1 percent in non-term-limited states.

I arrived at these numbers by a somewhat circuitous route. Several weeks ago, the Sacramento Bee had an interesting story, "Political merry-go-round diminishes Democrats' clout in Legislature." The premise of the story was that California Democrats are very close to having the two-thirds majorities necessary to approve budgets in both chambers of their Legislature, but they are continually stymied by having vacancies in the Legislature created by legislators moving to other offices. For example, two California members of Congress have been appointed to positions in the Obama Administration. It is likely that current state legislators will run for those seats, causing vacancies in the Legislature. A state senator moving on to another office often creates a vacancy in the Assembly because Assembly members move to the Senate.

What the story does not say is that, from a comparative perspective, California has a unique set of circumstances that exacerbate the problem of musical chairs in the Legislature. First, it is the only state that has more members of Congress (55 including U.S. senators) than it does state senators (40). This means that California state senators who want to move to Congress are especially well-positioned to do so, as they are likely to have already run and won in districts larger than the congressional ones. Second, along with Arkansas and Michigan, California has the most restrictive of all term limits: six years in the Assembly and eight in the Senate and a lifetime ban on any further legislative service. California legislators who want to continue a career in politics have especially strong incentives to run for other offices.

This got me to wondering about the career path from state legislatures to Congress, how the number of former state legislators serving in Congress varies from state to state and what might explain the variation. To get at this, I turned NCSL's list of former legislators serving in Congress into numbers by state.

Barefoot in Oklahoma--in Support of Shoes Around the World

From the Oklahoma Senate Communications Division:

Each day, millions of children around the world contract serious infections and diseases because they have no shoes. To help raise awareness of the problem, State Sen. Andrew Rice authored Senate Resolution 43 Thursday declaring April 16, 2009 as "One Day Without Shoes" in the state and asking Senate members and staff to participate in the world-wide event.

"It's sad that in this day and age there are countries with such extreme poverty that people don't even have the basic necessity of shoes to protect their feet. It's one of those things that most Americans take for granted - just think how many pairs of shoes are in our closets. We think of shoes as an accessory to go with an outfit, not as a necessity," said Rice. "I wanted to make my colleagues and other Oklahomans aware of this issue and encourage them to get involved with charities such as that ran by TOMS Shoes."

The "One Day Without Shoes" campaign was organized by TOMS Shoes, which was founded by American Blake Mycoskie after finding children in Argentina who had no shoes to protect their feet....

Photo: Senators Andrew Rice and Steve Russell applaud the One Day Without Shoes campaign.

Death Penalty is Still an Issue for State Legislatures

by Meagan Dorsch

New Mexico has become the most recent state to abolish its death penalty. This brings the total number of states with the death penalty to 35. New Mexico is the second state to abolish capital punishment since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976; New Jersey did so in December, 2007.

A little more than a year ago, we sat down with NCSL's Sarah Hammond, to discuss the activity surrounding the death penalty at the federal level. While there was a narrowing of the death penalty in recent years at the federal level, the majority of activity this year was seen in the states. Eight states total introduced measures to abolish the death penalty during the 2009 legislative session.

Listen to our podcast (8:49) to learn some of the factors states might be considering when proposing legislation to abolish the death penalty, what happens if a states does change their law on capital punishment and why the federal government has said they have taken some of their leads on this issue from states.

Subtleties Matter

by Tim Storey

As reported here in the Thicket back in February, there is a movement afoot in many states to enact resolutions asserting state sovereignty under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  And according to the "Tenth Amendment Center," resolutions have now been introduced in 33 state legislatures although a few of those states have completed regular sessions, so some of them are now stalled. 

My colleague Karl Kurtz, the Atlas upon whose shoulders The Thicket rests, has tracked these resolutions and wrote a very interesting post here recently about general memorializing of Congress by resolution.  Yesterday, Karl was invited to provide some background for a piece being put together by Bill Tucker, a reporter for CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight show, about the state sovereignty resolutions.  Karl did a nice job providing perspective, and the eventual piece included a lengthy soundbite from Karl.  See the whole story here: Lou Dobbs Tonight.

The story accurately portrays a movement by some of the nation's 7382 state legislators to send a message to Congress about federalism.  But what annoyed me was the misleading lead-in by the host.  Mr. Dobbs sets up the pre-produced video by saying,

"States in this country, 28 of them, asserting their constitutional right to soveriegnty.  More than half the country’s states are apparently fed up with Washington’s intervention and intrusion in what they consider to be states’ affairs.” 

He follows by saying that 28 states are considering sovereignty legislation, but his first two lines strongly imply that at least half of the states have passed, or endorsed, the sovereignty resolutions.  It may seem to some like a subtle distinction, but anyone who works in and around legislatures knows that filing a bill or resolution is far different than getting it passed.  It remains to be seen if the sovereignty efforts will catch fire and begin to pass, but it is not accurate to say that 28 states are "fed up with Washington."  What we do know is that at least one legislator in 28 states (apparently 33 states at this point) is fed up enough to drop a resolution in the proverbial hopper.  That's a far cry from getting a majority of their legislative peers to support the resolution. 

Proxy Voting Rare in Legislatures

by Karl Kurtz

"Do you know if your state legislature allows proxy voting on floor votes?  Or committees?  If it IS allowed, do you think it is a matter of tradition or do formal rules specifically allow for it?"  That was the question yesterday on a political scientist's listserv that I subscribe to.  Thanks to my colleague, Brenda Erickson, we have the answers to these questions.

But first it's necessary to define terms.  An article that Brenda wrote 10 years ago uses the more general term "remote voting" for legislators casting votes when they are not present.  There are six categories of remote voting: pairs, proxy, telephone, teleconference, videoconference and computer link.  Proxy voting is a specific form of remote voting in which one member authorizes another to vote on his or her behalf.

Of these different forms of remote voting, the only one that is in extensive use in floor sessions in state legislatures is paired voting. The rules for paired voting differ somewhat from state to state, but most commonly it occurs when a member who is absent from a legislative session arranges in writing in advance with another member to cast votes on opposite sides of an issue.  The effect is to cancel each other's vote out and to allow the absent member to be recorded on the issue.

At the time of Brenda's article (1999) 21 chambers provided for paired voting.  By contrast, 47 chambers had an outright prohibition on remote voting either in session or in committee.