If you voted for a bill containing a specific provision, it is entirely reasonable to supose that you support that provision, especially when you don't make a public protestation against the inclusion of that provision.
The counter claim is not as reasonable. Just because you vote against a bill containing a provision, that doesn't mean it is reasonable to supoose you oppose that provision (at leat without additional context.)
> What we need are the voting records on the amendment that added this stupid ban to the budget.
That would might give us additional information on who takes a strong stance against municipal broadband (or possibly who got their palms greased.)
No, that's not reasonable. You support the bill as a whole, not every sentence in it. The strongest that can be said is that you don't disagree with that provision strongly enough to reject the whole bill over it.
In any meaningful sense, they’re voting to ban muni broadband.
Are they? From the article:
> Last week's vote to restrict municipal broadband "was along party lines, with 25 GOP State Senators voting in favor of the Senate budget bill and the chamber's eight Democrats voting against it."
(The quote was from the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR)).
But what the quote says was that the Republicans voted for the bill, and the Democrats voted against the bill. They aren't (at least on the evidence presented) voting for or against the broadband limitations, but for or against the budget as a whole. Are the broadband limits why the Democrats are voting against? From the evidence given, we can't tell.
What we need are the voting records on the amendment that added this stupid ban to the budget. That's probably down in a committee somewhere, but it might be on the state Senate floor. What we need is the breakdown on that vote, not on the vote on the overall budget.
But Ars is taking evidence of votes on the budget as a whole, and trying to make them say that Republicans are against municipal broadband. They may in fact be against it, but Ars needs to show that, not just claim it on somewhat-tangentially-related evidence. As it is, one could reasonably wonder if Ars is just trying to spin an anti-Republican narrative.