Nay.
It wasn't until now that I caught this wording:
A Senator misses ten or more consecutive final votes or all final votes in three consecutive weeks, whichever number of final votes is higher
Effectively, this renders the "ten or more consecutive final votes" portion moot, as one cannot by definition know "whichever number of final votes is higher" until the three weeks have concluded. In other words, this bill indirectly decrees expulsion cannot occur until three weeks of all final votes have been missed by a Senator.
It's definitely something that I believe could easily be argued in court even if the Senate didn't agree with this interpretation, so I think this should be shot down and/or redrafted.
The 10+ rule is for if the Senate goes to only 10 final votes in a period greater than 3 weeks due to low activity. The language is intentional since I doubt anyone wants to auto-kick Senators after being MIA for less than three weeks.
Maybe I've short-circuited, but I feel like we're more or less agreeing here? My point was that the 10 final votes provision was completely irrelevant and should be excluded entirely from the legislation given its wording; it seems you're saying that such would only kick in after three weeks if there was a slower-than-usual workload...but the way this is written, missing all final votes in three weeks in such a scenario would still be the criteria and therefore the only number by which such is assessed. It doesn't say "10 votes only if there are fewer than 10 votes in a three-week period" or what have you.
Am I missing something or misreading here?
I
think you're misreading. I scanned it several times and it appears that non-votes in slower weeks aren't counted against someone, but ten unexcused missed votes overall will be enough to penalize.
