Chapter 11 - Voting
and divisions
Electronic voting
From time to time the suggestion is
made that a system of electronic voting should be adopted in the Senate,
usually on the ground that this would save time spent in divisions, but
sometimes with the suggestion that it would give the proceedings an appearance
of modernity.
On 9 May 1990 the President, pursuant to a resolution of the Senate,
tabled a paper on electronic voting. The paper pointed out that, assuming that
senators would continue to vote in person in the chamber, very little time
would be saved because four of the approximately seven minutes spent on each
division consists of the time taken to ring the bells to summon senators to the
chamber. The paper also pointed out that electronic voting would have
significant disadvantages, including:
-
it
would remove part of a pause in the proceedings which is often convenient
-
activities
which now take place during the count may be transferred to other components of
the time spent on divisions, so that little time would in fact be saved
-
the
current practice of senators sitting to the right or left of the chair has some
advantages which would be lost; in particular, it makes the act of voting
immediately visible and public
-
more
divisions may be called.
The paper pointed out that electronic voting is an advantage only with
large houses; it appears to become economical with houses of 300 or more
members. This was confirmed by overseas examples: the United States House of
Representatives (435 members) adopted electronic voting but the Senate (100
members) did not; the French Senate (320 members) rejected electronic voting
notwithstanding its adoption by the National Assembly (577 members).
The paper was referred to the Procedure Committee which, in its Second Report of 1990,
PP 435/1990, presented in December 1990, recommended that the Senate not
make any decision on electronic voting at that time. The matter has not been
further considered by the Senate, although the paper was updated in 2004 at the request
of senators.
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