Michigan’s Senators and State Reps Missed 768 Votes in 2019

Some of the missed votes come with very good reasons.

The 768 missed votes in 2019, reported by michiganvotes.org sounds like a lot, but it was much less than the 1,671 missed votes in 2018.

2018's higher numbers of missed votes were skewed by two major factors:

1. There were more votes to miss. The total number of roll call votes taken in 2018 was 2,088. In 2019, there were 748 total roll call votes.
2. One representative accounted for nearly half of the total of missed votes in 2018. Rep. Bettie Cook Scott, D-Detroit, missed 599 votes after she stopped showing up when she was defeated in a Senate primary election.

In 2019, one state senator and three House members missed more than 50 votes. Mackinac Center for Public Policy shares the reasons for some of the missed votes:

• Rep. Larry Inman, R-Traverse City, missed the most votes in 2019. Inman missed 124 votes as he was being indicted, prosecuted, tried and ultimately cleared in federal court of bribery charges brought by the FBI.
• Rep. Sheldon Neeley, D-Flint, missed 74 votes while running for mayor of Flint.
• Sen. Adam Hollier, D-Detroit, an Army Reserve officer, missed 51 votes reportedly due to military duty.
• Sen. Stefanie Chang, D-Detroit, missed the second-most votes in the Senate. All missed votes occurred in the weeks after she had a baby in June.