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From time to time, I've been asked by constituents to explain how the legislative voting process works. At times people are surprised on a particular vote when their representative proudly states that they voted yes on a bill that they say they were against or no on a bill that they supported. A good example of this is House Concurrent Resolution (HCR) 6 - A RESOLUTION affirming States’ rights based on Jeffersonian principles.
As many of you know, this was a bill I strongly supported. On March 4th, 2009, there were a series of votes about the fate of this bill. The final was 216 Yeas and 150 nays -- and as a result the bill was killed for this session.
In this case, what the house was voting on was a motion to kill further consideration of the bill. So, a "Yea" vote was not a vote to pass the bill but rather, it was a vote to kill the bill. So, I proudly count myself the 150 members of the house that voted Nay that day (along with the house sponsor of HCR6 - Rep. Dan Itse).
For those that are interested in the details of motions that come up for bills:
- A Motion of OTP means Opt to Pass (Passing a bill)
- A Motion of ITL means Inexpedient to Legislate (killing a bill)
- A Motion to Table, means to not vote one way or another and can in effect kill a bill, unless the majority or in most cases 2/3 of the house votes to take it off the table and act on it by either passing or failing it.
So, again back to the example of HCR 6, the final motion this year was ITL. We needed more no votes to prevent killing the bill and had we been successful, we would have moved to an OTP vote. Unfortunately, there were more Reps who voted yes on the ITL motion which ended consideration of this bill.
You can track the result the various house votes at the NH House of Representatives website or jump directly to the final ITL roll call on HCR 6.
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