MichiganVotes Weekly Report: December 30, 2021

Michigan Legislature Annual Missed Votes Report
State legislators missed 2,260 roll call votes in 2021; 58 out of 148 lawmakers missed none

MIDLAND, Mich. — Michigan’s 38 senators and 110 representatives missed 2,260 roll call votes in 2021, according to the annual Missed Votes Report produced by MichiganVotes.org.

Excluding purely procedural votes, the state Senate voted 494 times in 2021 and the House voted 640 times, for a total of 1,134 roll call votes by the entire Legislature.

Two senators and eight representatives each missed 50 or more votes in 2021, led by Rep. Steve Marino, with 232 missed votes, and Sen. Mallory McMorrow, with 118 missed votes. There were 14 senators and 44 representatives who missed no votes this year.

MichiganVotes.org is a free website created by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy that since 2001 has provided searchable, sortable, plain-English descriptions for every bill introduced and vote taken in this state’s legislature. The missed votes information was compiled by site editor Jack McHugh.

Missed votes usually occur when family, health or personal issues require a lawmaker’s absence for an entire day or longer. Occasionally legislators do not vote on a particular bill due to a potential conflict of interest, or when other demands within the legislative process call them off the floor. Voters should ask first and not make assumptions if their own representatives have more than a few missed votes.

The number of missed votes has fallen dramatically since the 2001-2002 Legislature, the first covered by MichiganVotes.org. Over that two-year period, individual Michigan lawmakers failed to cast a roll call vote 21,162 times.

“The very-high missed votes totals became a thing of the past once this information was made easily available on MichiganVotes.org,” said McHugh.

The full Missed Votes Report can be viewed at www.michiganvotes.org/MissedVotes.aspx, and can be sorted by name or by the quantity of missed votes. Missed vote totals for previous sessions can be viewed by entering a different date range.

The MichiganVotes.org website contains descriptions of every bill, amendment and vote by every state legislator starting in 2001 - nearly 39,000 bills introduced and nearly 33,000 record roll call votes taken. These are searchable and sortable by legislator, category, keyword and more; the site now contains the full voting records of most lawmakers who have served during the past 21 years.

See the full report with each legislators' missed votes totals at:

http://www.michiganvotes.org/MissedVotes.aspx

SOURCE: MichiganVotes.org, a free, non-partisan website created by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, providing concise, non-partisan, plain-English descriptions of every bill and vote in the Michigan House and Senate. Please visit www.MichiganVotes.org.

Permission to reprint this legislative summary in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that www.MichiganVotes.org is properly cited.