States Assembly voting records for 2022 (FOI)

Produced by the Freedom of Information office
Authored by Government of Jersey on behalf of the States Greffe and published on 03 May 2022.
Prepared internally, no external costs.

Request

Please can I receive (in excel format) the voting record for 2022 of all States Assembly members. By my count there have been 242 matters considered by the States Assembly this year and whilst I can view the voting records on an individual basis on the gov.je website, it is incredibly time consuming to go through 242 records for all 49 states members.

To clarify, I would like to see an excel sheet that details;

The total number of matters considered for voting in 2022 (which I believe to be 242)

The breakdown of votes For, Against, Abstained and 'not present' - as a total figure across all 49 States Assembly members

The breakdown by individual States Member voting record showing; Number of meetings eligible to vote at and a breakdown of votes of For, Against, Abstained and 'not present'

Response

All of the votes on propositions debated by the States Assembly are made available via the States Assembly website.  And the voting record of each elected States member is made available via their dedicated page on the States Assembly page.

Members (statesassembly.gov.je)

It has been possible to determine the total number of votes on propositions recorded on the website and to respond to the first part of the request.  A spreadsheet providing this information has been enclosed.  As of 22nd April 2022, the website recorded a total of 272 votes; of which 229 were appels (i.e. where the votes of each individual States member were recorded and which are shown as "electronic" in the spreadsheet) and 43 were standing votes (shown as "carried" in the spreadsheet).

 Voting Data 2022 (excel spreadsheet)

Procedural votes that are not attached to a proposition are not explicitly recorded on the website in the same way.  For example, decisions taken by the Assembly to adjourn for lunch or at the end of the day are not individually recorded on the website – regardless of whether the decision is taken by appel or by standing vote – although such decisions are reported in the minutes of the Assembly's meetings.  The total of number votes taken to date in 2022 will, in reality, therefore be slightly higher than the total of 272 recorded on the website. 

It is not possible from the way in which the information is stored on the website to extract responses to the second and third parts of the request: a breakdown of the total numbers of votes pour (for), contre (against), abstention or where a member was not present for the vote (for whatever reason) and such a breakdown for each individual member.

A manual search of the records would be required in order to obtain this information and we estimate that it would take in excess of 12.5 working hours to locate and retrieve this data.  This would exceed the cost limit provisions allowed under Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

Although not maintained by the States Greffe, and not information held by the department in respect of the Freedom of Information Law, the department is aware that information on elected States members' voting records is also presented on OurDemocracy.je (theyworkforyou.je) and may be of interest and use to the applicant.   

This response has been issued on behalf of the States Greffe. The States Greffe is responsible for the information held by (and on behalf of) both itself and the States Assembly.  Neither the States Assembly nor the States Greffe form part of the Government of Jersey and the Government was not involved either in the examination and retrieval of any information required for this response, nor in the drafting of the response itself.

Article applied

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.