Re: Recording votes

[Jon Bosak <bosak@boethius.eng.sun.com>]

[tallen@sonic.net:]

| a Division *doesn't* involve recording names.

True.  Once again the basic idea emerged intact from the mists of
a misspent youth, but all the details were wrong.  I was
conflating "Division of the Assembly" and "Yeas & Nays."

You are right that any member can call for a Division, which
simply means that any member can demand an accurate count.  But
putting names on the record requires a separate vote of the
assembly; it is *not* the default.  I have finally found the
relevant passage in the current edition (pp. 412-13):

   ROLL CALL VOTE. Taking a vote by roll call (or by yeas and
   nays, as it is also called) has the effect of placing on the
   record how each member or, sometimes, each delegation, votes;
   therefore, it has exactly the opposite effect of a ballot vote.
   It is usually confined to representative bodies, where the
   proceedings are published, since it enables constituents to
   know how their representatives voted on certain measures.  It
   should not be used in a mass meeting or in any assembly whose
   members are not responsible to a constituency....

   In the absence of ... a special rule, a majority vote is
   required to order the taking of a vote by roll call -- in which
   case a motion to do so is likely to be useless, since its
   purpose is to force the majority to go on record.  In local
   societies having a large membership but relatively small
   attendance at meetings, a motion to take a vote by roll call is
   generally dilatory....  A roll call vote cannot be ordered in
   committee of the whole.

| I agree with the conclusion, but not with the assertion that a
| "phone poll" isn't a roll call.

A phone poll is not a "roll call" if by that term you mean (as
Robert's does) something that puts the identity of the voters on the
record.  Putting people's names on the record is something that the
assembly specifically has to approve in a resolution separate from the
vote itself.

It might help prevent confusion to use the term "poll" to refer to the
device whereby we secure the knowledge that we would obtain visually
by a show of hands in a face-to-face meeting and use the term "yeas
and nays" to refer to the separate procedure that puts the name
associated with each vote on the record.

Jon