{"id":32661,"date":"2018-10-06T21:40:41","date_gmt":"2018-10-06T21:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=32661"},"modified":"2018-10-06T21:40:41","modified_gmt":"2018-10-06T21:40:41","slug":"two-votes-not-cast-to-what-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=32661","title":{"rendered":"Two votes not cast &#8230; to what end?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>I admit to being slow on the uptake. Thus, someone will have to explain how this works.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Senate today confirmed Judge Brett Kavanaugh&#8217;s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. The tally was 50-48.<\/p>\n<p>Two senators&#8217; votes weren&#8217;t recorded. Sen. Steve Daines, a Montana Republican, was absent, attending his daughter&#8217;s wedding. Daines would have voted &#8220;yes&#8221; on Kavanaugh&#8217;s nomination. The other non-vote came from Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, who declared her opposition to Kavanaugh; she voted &#8220;present&#8221; when they cast the roll-call vote.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a Senate custom that enables senators to pair their votes with those who cannot cast their votes in person. Murkowski teamed up with her friend Daines.<\/p>\n<p>But \u2026 why? If Murkowski had voted &#8220;no&#8221; on Kavanaugh&#8217;s nomination, the tally would have been 50-49; Kavanaugh still gets confirmed. Therefore, this vote pairing had no tangible impact on the outcome of the Senate.<\/p>\n<p>I guess I need to study more carefully the rules and customs that govern the World&#8217;s Most Deliberative Body. This one is a bit of a head-scratcher.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I admit to being slow on the uptake. Thus, someone will have to explain how this works. The U.S. Senate today confirmed Judge Brett Kavanaugh&#8217;s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. The tally was 50-48. Two senators&#8217; votes weren&#8217;t recorded. Sen. Steve Daines, a Montana Republican, was absent, attending his daughter&#8217;s wedding. Daines would have &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=32661\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Two votes not cast &#8230; to what end?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[7874,1941,6363,5051],"class_list":["post-32661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-brett-kavanaugh","tag-gop","tag-scotus","tag-us-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32662,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32661\/revisions\/32662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}