Because Congress is accountable to their constituents. You are only accountable to yourself.
If how they vote is secret, there's no way of holding them to the promises they made. They could just say "someone else voted it down, sorry" at the next election and you couldn't know that was a lie.
There are actually four ways they can vote. A voice vote or a division vote does NOT record how each member voted. A recorded vote or a "yeas or nays" vote does record that. The Digital Millennium Copy Right Act (1997) initially passed the house on a voice vote, so we have no idea who voted how. The majority of votes, though, do use one of the recorded methods, for reasons mentioned. senate.gov/CRSpubs/b79ade62-94d9-4e91-9883-70b00f76a708.pdf
Wouldn't secret voting help them be "accountable to their constituents"? In the sense that lobbyists would have less influence on them because they had no way of veryifying how they voted? I'm assuming here that representatives would then vote according to their concience (or, maybe according to their personal interest, but I believe that is probably more aligned with their public statements than the personal interest of third parties...). It would also make things like the Tea Party pledge from a few years ago impossible.
If you could prove which way you voted as an individual, vote-selling would be a thing. Is important in any democracy that you can't prove which way you voted (but also important that its provable your vote was counted). It's why cameras, even your own camera, inside the poll booths are often illegal. When it comes to officials, theres fewer people to police and audit.
@jdm Basically, anyone who contacts a Congress member to hold them accountable is a lobbyist. Not all lobbyists are paid, and some of them agree with you on the issues they support. We don't have a perfect system, but "lobbyist" basically means, anyone who cares enough to write a letter or otherwise communicate with Congress. I can't think of a better group of individuals to hold Congress accountable than "those who care enough."
Even corporate-sponsored lobbyists represent a group of constituents --- namely, their employees and stake-holders, and everyone who benefits from their continued success. So, the "worst" corporate-backed lobby groups are no more corrupt than We the People, who continue to work for, buy from, or own stock in these companies.
@jpaugh You don't have to communicate with them directly to hold them accountable. You do it with your vote and/or contributions in their re-election campaign.
@Barmar You can, and most do, usually including myself. However, you still rely on someone else to communicate with the candidate why so many (or so few) are contributing to their campaign, or voting for them. By communicating with a Congress member, you speak not only on behalf of your own vote, but also those of your silent neighbors. I'm merely pointing out that lobbyists are not inherently evil --- unless people also are.
There is also an element of legislative legitimacy involved; keeping track of who actually voted for a bill helps guarantee the presiding officials don't cheat. Also, mechanically, if you're watching on C-SPAN you can see the totals change as representatives go to the electronic voting devices and cast their votes.
@jpaugh I wasn't addressing the "evilness", just whether all influence constitutes lobbying. I assume that the "someone else" would usually be polling organizations (although in many cases a lobbyist might commission the poll and communicate its results).
@jeffronicus We don't need to record who voted for who/what in elections, yet we still maintain secure trails of how many votes were cast for each choice. Similar safeguards could be used for legislative votes. So it really goes back to whether we believe it's important for constituents to know.
@Jmons As evidenced by the rampant vote selling in the US states that have legalized "ballot selfies," of course. In fact, vote selling is just one part of that terrible omnipresent scourge, widespread voter fraud.
Voting has not always been secret in the US. In earlier times it was done in the open. This lead to a number of issues such as voter intimidation and retribution and the selling of votes.
@Caleth The point of being a representative is that it is a very well paid job. Being accountable to someone else is irrelevant. This is the real world, not fairyland.
@jpaugh I've always wondered: why do we consider selling of votes bad and sign of a corrupt system/corruption itself. Yet lobbiest who often go in with a lot of good deals, often including implicit job offers after the term an official sits, is considered "healthy"? Isn't that exactly the same: buying votes for monetary gain and not based on orral weight the person can gove towards the public?
@Caleth if something is not healthy someone who points that out in a democracy will create more and more traction and thus the healthy idea will be eventually voted in. Yet we see currently more and more lobbyism, where governments make (in case of netherlands) a 180 turn days after they get in office due to "Lobby and changing circumstances" - a tax benefit for big companies in response to unilever lobbying they might go to the UK (which they ended up doing anyways, but it netted a few jobs for people in the government at that company).
@paul23 "if something is not healthy someone who points that out in a democracy will create more and more traction and thus the healthy idea will be eventually voted in" only if the "unhealthyness" is percieved as problematic by enough of the electorate, or more pressing than their other priorities
What if intimidation is instead aimed at members of congress? What if members vote a certain way because they're scared that they and their family will face credible death threats or other violence from violent mobs? Unthinkable in the United States of America or Germany?
This is hilarious, we are all just going to pretend that private individuals are never lobbyists that make the choice of "public servants" very, very worthwhile being as they wish?
@Adam no, we are going to acknowledge that there isn't a nice demarcation between "representing the interests of a district / state" and "doing what big business wants"
@Caleth and after everything the Clinton Foundation has done for the world, what a shame the altruism of the shadow government will never be seen, only realiy tv stars and pseudo social justice warriors to entertain us all
If I don't see some poorly equipped mercenaries being blown to bits with the most sophisticated weaponry money can buy right now, I will just lose faith in all of humanity
And I know I have not mentioned a lot of very significant not for profit organizations that have served as the medium of parlay between the public servants and the shadow servants, my god its been a joint effort team, you should all feel proud as we reach hour 0
Discussion on answer by Caleth: Why a…
Discussion on answer by Caleth: Why a…