It's Easier to be a Zero than a Hero

In class, we discussed how the voting records of our representatives and senators are published online, and specifically looked at the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) 2010 Voting Record for the 111^th Congress.  The ADA makes it possible for constituents to observe how their representatives and senators voted, and to compare with the ideology of the each party.  In addition, constituents can observe how many of their representatives and senators are “Heroes”, or always voted with the Democratic Party, and how many are “Zeros” or always voted with the Republican Party.

At first glance, it seems there is a disproportionate number of Zeros and Heroes when looking at the voting record for the 111^th Congress.  Specifically, there are 111 Zeros in both the House and Senate, while there are only 54 Heroes.  These statistics imply that there is much larger number of steadfast Republicans in Congress who vote in line with the Republican Party 100% of the time, than there are Democrats who vote in line with the Democratic Party 100% of the time. 

However, upon further inspection, I realized that this is not the case.  When a member of Congress is not present to vote on a particular issue, the vote gets counted in as a zero.  This way of calculating drives the overall percentages to lower numbers, making some members look more conservative than they actually are.  For example McKeon, a Republican from California, voted with the Republican Party every vote he cast and even though he missed one vote, his percentage still stayed at 0% making him a Zero.  However when Eshoo, a Democrat from California who voted with the Democratic party every vote she cast, was not present for one vote it lowered her percentage to 95% and ruined her chances to become a Hero. 

This misrepresentation of absences as zeros makes the 111^th Congress look much more conservative than it actually is, and makes it much easier to be a Zero than a Hero.  The fact that there are twice as many Zeros than Heroes is not because of the ideology of the 111^th Congress, but more based on the way the percentages were calculated.