I probably wouldn't go quite as far as this piece, but worth noting that Germany (another country with judicial review as strong as the US) has judicial nomination votes kept secret. This is meant to help keep the process as un-partisan as possible. Would be interesting to hear what other votes are kept secret in various legislatures around the world. I might nominate taxes as another good one. Representatives behave very differently when they're not in front a C Span camera!
Honestly, just outlawing cameras on the floor of Congress would be a big step forward. No incentive for pointless partisan speeches that throw red meat to the base
Love this! Is there anything in the constitution that would disallow this? The other nice thing is this would make big money donors way less confident they’re getting their money’s worth. Do you think it would still be good to make public aware the party breakdown of votes yes/no from each party that happens during Anonymous Congress? If we had the latter system where total party support was recorded, would there be any issue in just letting all votes be anonymous sans the 20% minority threshold since the voters would still have the ability to throw out offending parties in the case that bad legislation won out?
I always put on my Machiavellian hat when I consider this realm, and my first thought is that you would have a lot of metaphorical witch hunting to try to suss out who voted against the party line. "Who are the RINOs/DINOs that voted for/against this? Unless you reveal your vote, we're gonna primary you!" And this being politicians, they're prone to lie about what their real vote was in anonymity. You could have some neutral entity who knows, but then that entity will get pressured to leak it, and once it's leaked, people have a First Amendment right to further spread the leak.
There's a lot I like about this, but you have some collective action problems that need a very strong norm of respecting anonymous votes in order for it to stick.
Useful as a thought experiment, though the specific proposal you outline is beyond unwieldly. In the old days of secret caucuses and very powerful committee chairs, much (most?) of congressional work happened somewhat like that. It's to my Boomer shame that way back then we campaigned so loudly for open democratic congressional procedures and the abolition of smoke-filled rooms. I speculate that just banning TV recording would help.
My thought on a similar vein to this is to make it way easier to force a vote on a bill. Something like legislators can force a vote in both chambers on a bill by getting 5 Senators and 30 reps to sign this newly revamped discharge petition. Each senator and rep could only sign one petition per 2 year cycle, so it's not something that can be done with frivolity.
This is an interesting column, and I love the general idea behind these weekly columns so kudos to Ben and the team.
I agree that citizens need to be able to hold their Members of Congress accountable. That can't happen if the results of certain votes are anonymous. So I don't think that vote results should stay anonymous permanently, but maybe they can stay anonymous for a certain time period (90 days, 180 days, until after primary season are all ideas off the top of my head). That would shield MoCs from immediate backlash but also allow citizens to eventually know the results and factor them into a general election vote.
I love this thought experiment. One thing I would suggest is that, in addition to only being held four times a year, only bills that had been introduced into congress and voted on publicly at least once could be considered during an anonymous congress. That way there would be at least a degree of the accountability that happens during an open session. I'm sure refinements would be necessary by those most expert in the world of politics, but I offer this as something to add into the discussion.
Sleepless in Seattle is a near perfect movie. The problem with modern romantic rom coms is the lack of suffering to counterpoint the value of love to heal loss. The whole “goofy meet cute” hallmarkification of rom coms is what has doomed them, not any murky cultural climate issues.
I love this one. My bottom line assessment of our imperfect democracy is that it really only guarantees one power, but it is very important: we can throw the bums out. Anonymous congress preserves that power and solves a lot of the pathological defects of democracy.
In case you (or other readers haven't read it), there was an excellent Astral Code Ten book review contest entry of Brian Kogelmann's "Secret Government" (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-secret-government). It complements today's post: deeper, but less practical.
Matts podcast partner is boring. Not in a good way. Matt should team up with someone like Sarah Isgur. She would bring energy, good verbal communication skills, and some interesting disagreement plus she’s kind of fun! I’m just planting this seed now so that possibly it can grow into something 2-3 years from now.
Anonymous Congress, eh? I get it - not democracy. That’s a dangerous trend on the left, from Thomas Friedman’s pining for Chicom authoritarianism to Matthew Yglesias wanting less transparency in government to the anti-free speech laws the left is forever pushing in Scotland, England, Canada and here in the USA.
It’s time the Democrats just add Repeal the First Amendment to their platform, along with a Less Transparency in Government Act. I suggest you guys also take a look at the old Roman custom of declaring a temporary dictator in times of emergency like, uh, say a Republican is trending toward winning the White House, lol.
Wouldn't the crazy extremist members of Congress just reveal who was insufficiently extreme in the private session? Do we expect MTG to honor the anonymity?
I realize this is admittedly half-baked, but there is directly relevant history here that ought not be neglected. Before the early 1970s, the House did much more in the Committee of the Whole, and it was very common to take teller votes—yes, submitting little stubs of paper, anonymously. Many of the most important decisions were made in this way, with close and untraceable votes, and then final passage votes would tend to be very large numbers, as members put themselves on the record so as to take credit.
There were a lot of good things about this, and I’d like to see it brought back. But it’s not like the transparency reformers had no valid complaints. Attendance was often poor. Members could serve interests without any record.
The main thing we’d need to do to move back to this model is resuscitate floor action as a way of legislating. Right now it’s pretty completely dead.
I like this idea, but I think that your “too effective” scenario seems very likely. Right now, a lot of Congress’s activity happens through the small set of procedures which create exceptions to the normal gridlock (eg: budget reconciliation); this would probably have a similar effect.
This piece strikes me as too ad hoc and too naive. Anonymous votes may have their place in specific instances and parallels are known in other democracies. But this proposal is too messy and too prone to corruption which is curiously absent from the discussion. Anonymity shields congresspeople from their voters to whom they ought to be accountable but does NOT shield them from special interest groups lobbies their peers or the president. Nor are e proposed limiting rules all that impressive. “2/3” of the people described could be the president and one other loyal person from his party (eg trump and senate/house majority leader). Then all that is stopping you from doing whatever is the assumption that you can’t find 20% of democrats willing to go along with some kind of corruption or power grab in a scenario where they have complete deniability. It assumes that over 80% of Congress in both parties are at heart both moderate and honest. Strikes me as very naive.
I probably wouldn't go quite as far as this piece, but worth noting that Germany (another country with judicial review as strong as the US) has judicial nomination votes kept secret. This is meant to help keep the process as un-partisan as possible. Would be interesting to hear what other votes are kept secret in various legislatures around the world. I might nominate taxes as another good one. Representatives behave very differently when they're not in front a C Span camera!
Honestly, just outlawing cameras on the floor of Congress would be a big step forward. No incentive for pointless partisan speeches that throw red meat to the base
Shouldn’t it just be VP rather than President, sidestepping the separation of powers issue?
Love this! Is there anything in the constitution that would disallow this? The other nice thing is this would make big money donors way less confident they’re getting their money’s worth. Do you think it would still be good to make public aware the party breakdown of votes yes/no from each party that happens during Anonymous Congress? If we had the latter system where total party support was recorded, would there be any issue in just letting all votes be anonymous sans the 20% minority threshold since the voters would still have the ability to throw out offending parties in the case that bad legislation won out?
I always put on my Machiavellian hat when I consider this realm, and my first thought is that you would have a lot of metaphorical witch hunting to try to suss out who voted against the party line. "Who are the RINOs/DINOs that voted for/against this? Unless you reveal your vote, we're gonna primary you!" And this being politicians, they're prone to lie about what their real vote was in anonymity. You could have some neutral entity who knows, but then that entity will get pressured to leak it, and once it's leaked, people have a First Amendment right to further spread the leak.
There's a lot I like about this, but you have some collective action problems that need a very strong norm of respecting anonymous votes in order for it to stick.
Useful as a thought experiment, though the specific proposal you outline is beyond unwieldly. In the old days of secret caucuses and very powerful committee chairs, much (most?) of congressional work happened somewhat like that. It's to my Boomer shame that way back then we campaigned so loudly for open democratic congressional procedures and the abolition of smoke-filled rooms. I speculate that just banning TV recording would help.
My thought on a similar vein to this is to make it way easier to force a vote on a bill. Something like legislators can force a vote in both chambers on a bill by getting 5 Senators and 30 reps to sign this newly revamped discharge petition. Each senator and rep could only sign one petition per 2 year cycle, so it's not something that can be done with frivolity.
This is an interesting column, and I love the general idea behind these weekly columns so kudos to Ben and the team.
I agree that citizens need to be able to hold their Members of Congress accountable. That can't happen if the results of certain votes are anonymous. So I don't think that vote results should stay anonymous permanently, but maybe they can stay anonymous for a certain time period (90 days, 180 days, until after primary season are all ideas off the top of my head). That would shield MoCs from immediate backlash but also allow citizens to eventually know the results and factor them into a general election vote.
I love this thought experiment. One thing I would suggest is that, in addition to only being held four times a year, only bills that had been introduced into congress and voted on publicly at least once could be considered during an anonymous congress. That way there would be at least a degree of the accountability that happens during an open session. I'm sure refinements would be necessary by those most expert in the world of politics, but I offer this as something to add into the discussion.
Sleepless in Seattle is a near perfect movie. The problem with modern romantic rom coms is the lack of suffering to counterpoint the value of love to heal loss. The whole “goofy meet cute” hallmarkification of rom coms is what has doomed them, not any murky cultural climate issues.
Hunger is the sweetest sauce.
#bakedtake
I love this one. My bottom line assessment of our imperfect democracy is that it really only guarantees one power, but it is very important: we can throw the bums out. Anonymous congress preserves that power and solves a lot of the pathological defects of democracy.
In case you (or other readers haven't read it), there was an excellent Astral Code Ten book review contest entry of Brian Kogelmann's "Secret Government" (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-secret-government). It complements today's post: deeper, but less practical.
Matts podcast partner is boring. Not in a good way. Matt should team up with someone like Sarah Isgur. She would bring energy, good verbal communication skills, and some interesting disagreement plus she’s kind of fun! I’m just planting this seed now so that possibly it can grow into something 2-3 years from now.
Anonymous Congress, eh? I get it - not democracy. That’s a dangerous trend on the left, from Thomas Friedman’s pining for Chicom authoritarianism to Matthew Yglesias wanting less transparency in government to the anti-free speech laws the left is forever pushing in Scotland, England, Canada and here in the USA.
It’s time the Democrats just add Repeal the First Amendment to their platform, along with a Less Transparency in Government Act. I suggest you guys also take a look at the old Roman custom of declaring a temporary dictator in times of emergency like, uh, say a Republican is trending toward winning the White House, lol.
Wouldn't the crazy extremist members of Congress just reveal who was insufficiently extreme in the private session? Do we expect MTG to honor the anonymity?
I realize this is admittedly half-baked, but there is directly relevant history here that ought not be neglected. Before the early 1970s, the House did much more in the Committee of the Whole, and it was very common to take teller votes—yes, submitting little stubs of paper, anonymously. Many of the most important decisions were made in this way, with close and untraceable votes, and then final passage votes would tend to be very large numbers, as members put themselves on the record so as to take credit.
There were a lot of good things about this, and I’d like to see it brought back. But it’s not like the transparency reformers had no valid complaints. Attendance was often poor. Members could serve interests without any record.
The main thing we’d need to do to move back to this model is resuscitate floor action as a way of legislating. Right now it’s pretty completely dead.
I like this idea, but I think that your “too effective” scenario seems very likely. Right now, a lot of Congress’s activity happens through the small set of procedures which create exceptions to the normal gridlock (eg: budget reconciliation); this would probably have a similar effect.
This piece strikes me as too ad hoc and too naive. Anonymous votes may have their place in specific instances and parallels are known in other democracies. But this proposal is too messy and too prone to corruption which is curiously absent from the discussion. Anonymity shields congresspeople from their voters to whom they ought to be accountable but does NOT shield them from special interest groups lobbies their peers or the president. Nor are e proposed limiting rules all that impressive. “2/3” of the people described could be the president and one other loyal person from his party (eg trump and senate/house majority leader). Then all that is stopping you from doing whatever is the assumption that you can’t find 20% of democrats willing to go along with some kind of corruption or power grab in a scenario where they have complete deniability. It assumes that over 80% of Congress in both parties are at heart both moderate and honest. Strikes me as very naive.