Global Use of The Conscience Vote
Free votes are found in Canadian and some British legislative bodies, conscience votes in Australian and New Zealand legislative bodies.
In the United States, parties exercise comparatively little control over the votes of individual legislators, who are almost always free to vote as they wish. Accordingly, most legislative votes in the United States can be considered free votes, although in rare circumstances a legislator may be disciplined by his or her party for a renegade vote. Such discipline usually occurs only on votes regarding procedural matters on which party unity is expected as a matter of course, rather than substantive matters. For example, Democrat James Traficant was stripped of his seniority and committee assignments in 2001 when he voted for a Republican, Dennis Hastert, to be Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Because free votes are the norm in the United States, the terms "free vote" and "conscience vote" are generally unused and unknown there.
Read more about this topic: Conscience Vote
Famous quotes containing the words global, conscience and/or vote:
“Ours is a brandnew world of allatonceness. Time has ceased, space has vanished. We now live in a global village ... a simultaneous happening.”
—Marshall McLuhan (19111980)
“Peace is normally a great good, and normally it coincides with righteousness, but it is righteousness and not peace which should bind the conscience of a nation as it should bind the conscience of an individual; and neither a nation nor an individual can surrender conscience to anothers keeping.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (18581919)
“The United States is a republic, and a republic is a state in which the people are the boss. That means us. And if the big shots in Washington dont do like we vote, we dont vote for them, by golly, no more.”
—Willis Goldbeck (19001979)