Mark's vote breaks 15-15 Senate deadlock to pass Special Operations Bill

Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark used his cast­ing vote ear­ly this morn­ing to break a 15-15 dead­lock and se­cure pas­sage of the Gov­ern­ment’s Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, fol­low­ing a tense con­clu­sion to de­bate in the Up­per House.

The bill re­ceived the sup­port of all 15 Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors but was re­ject­ed by all six Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors and the nine In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, leav­ing the cham­ber even­ly di­vid­ed.

With the vote tied, Mark in­ter­vened, say­ing he had re­searched his au­thor­i­ty to ex­er­cise a cast­ing vote and was sat­is­fied he could break the dead­lock.