The Los Angeles Times has uncovered the stunning story of how Obama accidentally voted wrong 6 times while in the Illinois Senate.
“I was not aware that I had voted no,” he said that day in June 2002, asking that the record be changed to reflect that he “intended to vote yes.”
That was not the only misfire for the former civil rights attorney first elected to the state Senate in 1996. During his eight years in state office, Obama cast more than 4,000 votes. Of those, according to transcripts of the proceedings in Springfield, he hit the wrong button at least six times.
Oh no! Six times out of 4,000 votes! How could this be rectified?
The rules allow state lawmakers to clear up a mishap if they suffered from a momentary case of stumbly fingers or a lapse in attention. Correcting the record is common practice in the Illinois Legislature, where lawmakers routinely cast numerous votes in a hurry.
Oh. Well, clearly he was hiding this record. It’s not like the LA Times could have just, I don’t know, opened up a copy of The Audacity of Hope and found this out.
The Audacity of Hope, page 132-33
Perhaps my greatest bit of good fortune during my own Senate campaign was that no candidate ran a negative TV ad about me. This had to do entirely with the odd circumstances of my Senate race, and not an absence of material with which to work. After all, I had been in the state legislature for seven years when I ran, had been in the minority for six of those years and had cast thousands of sometimes difficult votes. As is standard practice these days, the National Republican Senatorial Committee had prepared a fat binder of opposition research on me before I was even nominated, and my own research team spent many hours combing through my record in an effort to anticipate what negative ads the Republicans might have up their sleeves.
They didn’t find a lot, but they found enough to do the trick– a dozen or so votes that, if described without context, could be made to sound pretty scary. When my media consultant, David Axelrod, tested them in a poll, my approval rating immediately dropped ten points. There was the criminal law bill that purported to crack down on drug dealing in schools but had been so poorly drafted that I concluded it was both ineffective and unconstitutional– “Obama voted to weaken penalties on gang-bangers who deal drugs in schools,” is how the poll described it. There was a bill sponsored by antiabortion activists that on its face sounded reasonable enough- it mandated lifesaving measures for premature babies (the bill didn’t mention that such measures were already the law)– but also extended “personhood” to previable fetuses, thereby effectively overturning Roe vs. Wade; in the poll, I was said to have “Voted to deny lifesaving treatment to babies born alive.” Running down the list, I came across a claim that while in the state legislature I had voted against a bill to “protect our children from sex offenders.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, snatching the sheet from David’s hands. “I accidentally pressed the wrong button on that bill. I meant to vote aye, and had it immediately corrected in the official record.”
David smiled. “Somehow, I don’t think that portion of the official record will make it into a Republican ad.” He gently retrieved the poll from my hands. “Anyway, cheer up,” he added, clapping me on the back. “I’m sure this will help you with the sex offender vote.”
….Oh.
Goon Oracle comes in with the coup d’grace, pointing us to the tale of Representative Tim Johnson, a Republican from the Champaign-Urbana area who rigged a paper clip so that it held the ”Yes” voting button on his desk in the down position. This way he could vote and still go play golf.
