The Electoral Connection and Participation on House Roll Call Votes, 1819-1921

Abstract

It is commonly understood by students of Congress that representatives use their roll call votes as a signal to constituents. The vote choice – whether on a single bill or motion as a position taking device (Mayhew 1974) or as a string of votes (Fenno 1978) – offers the constituent a metric for congruence on policy matters on the congressional agenda. The act of voting itself can also be a signal to constituents the degree to which the member fulfills his or her professional responsibilities; whereas committee work and constituency service do not have a clear metric, roll call voting does. But the act of casting a roll call vote, like a vote cast at the ballot box, is not costless. Attendance in Washington may come at the expense of private business or electioneering at home. Especially in the early House, travel was difficult and conditions in the Capitol inhospitable. In the 19th century Congress as in the 21st, a great deal of the Washington work by a representative occurred outside floor voting – introducing resolutions, responding to constituent inquiries, meeting in committee – and whose time commitments may compete with roll calls. Moreover, abstaining might at times be a dominant strategy, especially when exercised by a sizable minority attempting to prevent a quorum for business. Certainly a great deal of nonvoting in the 19th century House is due to idiosyncratic and nonpolitical factors like illness, drunkenness and apathy. Even so, we argue in this paper that the calculus of roll call participation is shaped and influenced by changes in legislative and electoral institutions and practices, and that this is observable in the variation in the rates of nonvoting across representatives and over time. More specifically, we consider how changes in the role of parties, elections and quorum rules altered the incentives for members to cast roll call votes. The paper proceeds as follows. First, we consider institutional changes in the 19th century House of Representatives which may have affected the calculus of voting for members. The list is not exhaustive, but does suggest three broad eras for considering their participation choices. Second, an overview of the contours of House roll call participation from 1819 to 1921 is offered. Third, we model roll call participation rates at the member level across the century in order to understand the magnitude of the systematic component of nonvoting. Together the results suggest that members were responsive to institutional change, but that the standard markers of modernizing House institutions – in particular the adoption of the Reed Rules and the spread of the Australian ballot – resulted only in modest shifts in the roll call participation of representatives.