When Lawmakers Make a Mistake Voting

Derek Willis: “Members of the House have voted the wrong way at least 112 times since the beginning of 2011 (see all of them here). This isn’t an epidemic; the number of mistaken votes represents about one in every 10,000 individual votes taken during that span, and no member of the House has done it more than four times (Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat, holds the dubious honor).”

“In all, 84 of the 519 people who have served in the House since 2010 have registered an incorrect vote since the beginning of 2011. It’s possible that others have done the same but have not put a statement in the Congressional Record about it. If so, that’s a pity, because those statements both clarify the lawmaker’s intentions (in order to avoid any political missteps) and also provide some examples of creative assignment of responsibility.”