February 9, 2017 — What do you have the right to see, as a citizen of this country? if a vote takes place that essentially gives away a public resource for nothing, should you see who votes yes and who votes no?
When we showed Congressman Garret Graves the response to our Freedom of Information Act request, he laughed.
The response was a heavily-redacted tally of votes, conducted years ago, that helped hand over tens of millions of dollars every year to a small group of fishermen. We requested the vote count in our FOIA request, but the federal government gave us little of the information we requested, blacking out the key part: who voted yes and who voted no.
“This is a public body,” notes Graves, a Louisiana Republican. “You can’t hide the votes from this. That’s not OK.”
When we showed him the blacked-out lists again, he tells us, “Not for long – because I’m going to get the answer to that.”