Okay, I promise that this is my last post on voting attendance.

Former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kans., knows a few things about voting streaks, having served in the House and Senate for 36 years before leaving the Senate in 1996 to run for president.

I had called Dole on Thursday in the hopes that I could get some anecdotes for my story about the Collins-Allen voting attendance issue. Alas, he called me back Friday afternoon from his law firm, Alston & Bird, in Washington, D.C.

Dole could not recall senators going to unusual lengths to get to a vote or to avoid breaking a streak of consecutive votes, but did remember ending a streak.

“As majority leader, I remember having to break a streak because we just could hold the vote open,” he said, adding that he thought it was Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, R-Minn., whose streak he broke.

In the 1960s, when he served in the House, he recalled a Florida Democrat – he could not remember which one – had a voting streak, but he was about to miss a vote. The leaders liked him so much they used a procedural trick to end the legislative day in the middle of the vote and hold it the next day when that lawmaker would be there.

“I know [Senate leaders] have kept votes open for people who have perfect records, which is OK because it does not happen very often and there are things [senators] cannot control,” such as the weather.

Dole did not serve with Collins, who was first elected in 1996, but he did serve with Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who has made more than 5,000 consecutive votes.

“I used to kid him he voted wrong every time,” Dole said jokingly. Grassley has a reputation as an independent, sometimes angering Republicans and Democrats alike.

Dole did say that there is an element of compulsion to a streak, but that voters wanted to know their lawmakers were in Washington doing their jobs and back at home on the weekends engaging in old-fashioned retail politics.

“That’s just how it is important to some people. Gets to be a real big thing,” Dole said. “You’re getting paid for being in Congress. That’s why you’re here.”

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