The Complaint and the Campaign Path

Did you catch state Senator Lou Raptakis (D., Coventry) in the Providence Journal?

It is no accident or coincidence that as Rhode Island is mired in an economic and budgetary crisis, our General Assembly has been operating in the shadows. When hundreds of bills are considered at the last minute, when significant new proposals are brought forward for a vote without substantive public debate, and when House Speaker Gordon Fox suggests that members should vote on bills without reading them because it’s just time for everyone to go home, we have a broken legislative system.

Raptakis is keeping the light on his fallen legislation to require legislators' votes to be publicized more quickly and simply as he runs for... Secretary of State. Obviously, keeping track of such records would be a relevant task for somebody interested in that office, but it would take the action of legislators to make it available.

I feel like I'm missing something when it comes to the campaign path that Sen. Raptakis has chosen for this election cycle. Perhaps he could implement something resembling his proposed vote tallying process from within the secretary's office, but that's not the message of his op-ed.