CHEYENNE — The Wyoming Legislature has come a long way since the era of typewriters, cranky photocopiers and bills drafted by private corporate lawyers or state agencies.

The biggest and best step was the establishment of the Legislative Services Office (LSO) and its staff, and the introduction of computers.

The creation of the LSO allowed our citizen legislators to sponsor their own bills with the assistance of legal researchers and attorneys. This is democracy at work.

In the 1980s, there was a movement to install an electronic voting system in the House of Representatives.

With around sixty members, the roll call votes were considered too long.

House leaders resisted, pointing out that Herb Pownall, then chief clerk of the House, was so good and quick at counting a vote that no electronic system was needed.

The Senate, which has only about 30 members, was not targeted as needing an electronic voting system, given its shorter and faster roll-call votes.

Now, decades later, the Legislature has a system combining an electronic voting system, which is consistent with other smaller legislative chambers, according to LSO staff and Internet sources.

This type of voting system integrates the accountability of traditional verbal voting with electronic voting software technology, which streamlines vote tabulation and reporting.

The Legislature’s Select Committee on Legislative Facilities, Technology and Process recently voted in favor of a system to display roll-call votes in real time, perhaps via a new site link Web. The vote was a compromise from the original proposal for a billboard in the legislative chambers.

The amendment for the change came from two committee members: Republican Reps. Dalton Banks, R-Cowley, and Dan Lausen, R-Powell.

They spoke of the need to ensure greater transparency of legislative action in order to keep the public informed and informed.

The idea is that real-time voting on a website brings the viewer closer to the real action as it takes place.

But, in my opinion, votes on bills are now easily and quickly available on the LSO web page and the real-time system does nothing more than click through for a few minutes for a viewer.

But then I have a different perspective. I covered the Legislature before the computer age, when it was difficult to simply obtain a copy of a ballot sheet.

And that’s why, for me, the LSO website offers almost all the information I need in record time, if not real time.

Despite all this search for more transparency, nothing was said at the committee meeting about recording votes on bills in committee of the whole, which is the meeting of the House or Senate to discuss bills of legislation that have been reported by the committees.

The process appears sacrosanct as a relic of the English system that used it to relax the boundaries of debate and allow a more open exchange of views “without the urgency of a final vote”, according to internet sources.

In Wyoming, it’s casual: Members move in and out of chambers while the bill’s sponsors present their arguments.

Votes are verbal appeals for or against; the legislator in charge decides which side is louder.

A member in disagreement may request a roll vote.

But other bills may die for uncertain reasons and without a recorded vote on who voted for and against.

Many bills are abandoned in committee of the whole and should probably be part of the triage system.

But this English relic perhaps also needs transparency.

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Contact Joan Barron at 307-632-2534 or jmbarron@bresnan,net

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Mea culpa: A few weeks ago, I failed to give access to a video of a Weston County Commissioners meeting to the Newcastle Journal.