Out of the Office

[Erik]

You should have given a link to where you got that info, and just not the votesmart.org site.
I cant find that summary anywhere there, so I googled around.
Here's govtrack.com

John McCain missed 738 of 4104 roll call votes (18%) since Feb 4, 1993.

If you check the numbers, you see that most of the votes he missed was during the 2000 campaign, and this campaign.

Here's Obamas numbers

Barack Obama missed 306 of 1287 roll call votes (24%) since Jan 6, 2005.

So, Obama has missed 306 votes in less than 4 years, while McCain has missed 738 votes in over 15 years.
Also note that there are a lot more roll call votes in later years, and there weren't as many in the 1990s, so the numbers are scewed in Obamas favor. If there had been as many roll calls in McCains early years, McCains numbers would probably have been something like 800/5500 = 15% missed roll call votes.

[308Mike]

Yeah, but compare how many times they voted PRESENT.

[princewally]

I just did the math.

According to govtrack:
Barack Obama missed 306 (24%) of 1287 votes since Jan 6, 2005. The graph to the left shows the number of missed votes over time. Click for a larger chart and a list of recent votes.

Statistics: Barack Obama has sponsored 121 bills since Jan 24, 2005, of which 116 haven't made it out of committee and 2 were successfully enacted. Obama has co-sponsored 490 bills during the same time period. (Starting Sept 17, 2008, these numbers do not include resolutions.)

John McCain missed 738 (18%) of 4104 votes since Feb 4, 1993. The graph to the left shows the number of missed votes over time. Click for a larger chart and a list of recent votes.

Statistics: John McCain has sponsored 473 bills since Jan 21, 1993, of which 307 haven't made it out of committee and 30 were successfully enacted. McCain has co-sponsored 809 bills during the same time period. (Starting Sept 17, 2008, these numbers do not include resolutions.)

[arkythehun]

Geez... Yall are making me do a lot more thinking than I am prepared to do on a Thursday night.

So I read more about votesmart.org. Their records only cover the "hot button" issues and only the "big" votes on bills or amendments. Their records only go to '95 but not in all cases. Some issues are only much more recent.

I cede the point. Those numbers are skewed - although my math on them was good.

Here are the links:
McCain (as Senator since '95): http://votesmart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=53270
Obama: http://votesmart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=9490
Cornyn: http://votesmart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=15375

I find the information on the site to be much more useful for guaging a politician's politics than govtrack.us (although govtrack is good).