Are your state representatives voting in new laws that you don't like?

Find out what your representatives are doing before it is too late!

A state law begins when representatives submit a proposal called a bill to the legislature. Each bill is usually reviewed and refined in several committees before it goes to the legislature where it is voted into state law or killed. Committees can change the meaning of a bill or reject it entirely. Each committee is focused on a particular aspect of the bill. Committees are composed of a few state representatives from the legislature that have expert knowledge on the committee topic.

If you know who the representatives are on the committees, you can influence them to change the meaning of bills or kill the bill in committee.

There is an easy way to find out how your state representatives are voting on bills.    This will give you an opportunity to influence your representatives before a bill becomes a law.

I will use California Assembly bill AB1797 as an example. This bill requires schools to continue COVID-19 testing indefinitely and to report all data to the CA Dept. of Public Health.

Assembly bill AB1797 is a bad bill. It ignores the fact that very few children are hospitalized or die from COVID-19. But it continues the harassment of children and violates their rights and the rights of their parents to privacy.

To find out how my local CA Assembly representative Brian Maienschein voted on this bill I went to the LegiScan website. Click on the LegiScan link to follow my investigation.

On the LegiScan website scroll down to the "National Legislative Search" section.  I input my state, bill number, and clicked the "Search" button.  This gets me to the bill summary page.

I clicked the grayed out "Votes" button which is three buttons to the right of the "Summary" button highlighted in black letters. This takes you to the page that shows the history of committee voting.

From previous research, I know that Brian Maienschein is in the committee on Education.  So I go down to the “Voting Records” section and to the second row labeled "Do pass and be re-referred to the Committee on [Education]". Next, go to the far right and click the "View" link.

If you want to see the official government record of the vote and get more detail you can click “Link” on the immediate left of the “View” link on the history of committee voting web page.

Now I can see that my CA Assembly representative Brian Maienschein voted to pass AB1797.  I had called his office and told them that I oppose AB1797 and would like Brian to vote against it. I am not happy with his vote. 

At this time there are two things I can do. Since the bill is re-referred to the Education committee I can call Brian’s office again and request he oppose the bill. Ultimately, he is up for re-election in November.  If I don’t like his actions, I will not vote for Brian.

While I have not yet been successful in influencing my representative, the bill will go through more committees and then the final legislative votes. I will have additional opportunities.

This type of discovery can be done on any bill in any state before it becomes a law that you must obey or face the consequences.

This knowledge gives you an opportunity to communicate and influence your representatives.

If we want a government of the people, by the people, and for the people; then we must manage our representatives.