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 brand—new world of allatonceness. “Time” has ceased, “space” has vanished. We now live in a global village ... a simultaneous happening.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
““How many things there were for conscience to bite on in the past! How good its teeth were then!—And today? What is missing?”MA dentist’s question.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)