In today's paper, we took a look at the voting attendance records of Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, and Rep. Tom Allen, a Democrat. There's a lot of context about this issue that I wasn't able to fit into the story because of space limitations in print.

One point worth mentioning is that the House votes much more frequently than the Senate. Collins has cast more than 3,700 votes in her more than 11 years in the Seante, while Allen has cast more than 7,000 votes over the same period.

The House votes at almost double the rate than the Senate.

Also, for another point of comparison, there are four other House members running for the Senate. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., has missed 73 votes this term. Allen has missed 42. Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., and Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., squaring off in the primary there, have missed 26 and 19 votes, respectively. Udall's cousin, Tom, is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination in New Mexico. He's missed 22 votes (although he did get started later).

It's not unusual for House members to start missing a lot of votes when they run for higher office. Last year, for example, Democrats and Republicans running for Senate seats and governor missed anywhere from six to 25 percent of all votes.

Senators running for president - although the race is of a different scope, intensity and duration - have been absent. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has missed 56.4 percent of all votes cast this term as of March 14.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has missed 37 percent of the votes and Sen. Hillary Clinton has missed 26.8 percent of roll call votes.

Those numbers certainly would have been higher before March 14, when the Senate held a marathon voting session on the budget resolution. The upper chamber cast more votes that day than it has all year.

E-mail this entry to a friend