“when private citizens are able to vote privately, it protects their ability to vote their conscience, rather than allowing some third party to explicitly buy votes or bully someone into voting in line with someone else”,
and the belief that somehow this doesn’t apply to congress members.
Additionally, on hard philosophical and policy qurstions, some bits of negotiation and dealmaking are bare-knuckled “the sausage gets made” affairs that are brutally hard on the ego and participants. Part of why nothing can get through Congress anymore in a timely fashion and without continual brinksmanship on important funding or to prevent shutdowns is because even if crossing party lines would very often be in the public’s interest, and to the public’s net benefit, haggling to make it happen or voting to make it so often doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of thousands of watchful eyes where an important deal may hinge on brutal haggling which the public couldn’t stomach seeing the intermediate steps and votes of.
One such example in practical terms: if the constitutional convention which replaced the articles of confederation took place in the internet age with modern real-time, to the minute reporting on how everyone was voting on every intermediate plan and how any compromise made was a betrayal of “party lines” on an issue, America as a country probably wouldn’t exist today.
Transparency has its own benefits, but it’s not without costs - you make a legislative body’s job more difficult, you get corresponding gridlock to match.
If you believe that electorates punish politicians for decisions in the public interest, and legislators’ jobs would be easier if they were less accountable to their voters, why support democracy at all?
There's no "THE problem." There's a ton of "problems." Just to be clear. Because many of the problems we face today are through interaction of different things, often in a complex chain, rather than a direct easy to follow causal chain.
> via old fashioned grapevine
Treat the problem as an adversarial problem. Yes, your adversary will always be able to break your defenses. Nothing is bulletproof. How you defend is through forcing adversaries to expend resources. It is very clear that forcing lobbiests to learn through the grapevine is a more costly method than simply looking at a public database. And if you aren't familiar with this concept, people lie. No one need know your vote unless you reveal it (which... might be a lie).
The point also is that it can also prevent inner conflict, among parties. You're not voting along party lines? You think you're going to get as much support from your party when it comes to your bills and campaign funds? So you have plenty of incentive to not reveal your vote, even among allies.
I agree with you in that switching to private votes won't solve the problems we have. But would it improve? I'd guess some and I'd guess it would take time for the real effects to be seen. But the other side is, would it do harm? I doubt it.
I’m not one who believes the constitution is sacred or that the founding fathers were infallible, but I do think the chance for a person to vote their conscience vs their politics is an important feature. While the grapevine might be a route to learn, it’s also a route that doesn’t have to be accurate. I can tell my lobbyist whatever I want about my vote, but only I know what my vote was in private voting. This feels like a feature not a flaw.
The point of representative democracy is selecting a person whose judgement you believe in. Public voting records lead to populist and party strangleholds on outcomes with consequences for breaking dogma. Practically speaking it also gives lobbyists proof positive of whether their money was well spent.
