Proxy Voting - Legislatures

Legislatures

The rules of some assemblies presently forbid proxy voting. For example, in both houses of the U.S. Congress, as well as in most if not all state legislatures, each member must be present and cast his own vote for that vote to be counted. This can result, however, in the absence of a quorum and the need to compel attendance by a sufficient number of missing members to get a quorum. See call of the house.

It is possible for automatic proxy voting to be used in legislatures (this idea is essentially a form of Weighted Voting). For example, it has been proposed that instead of electing members from single-member districts (that may have been gerrymandered), members be elected at large, but when seated each member cast the number of votes he or she received in the last election. Thus, if, for example, a state were allocated 32 members in the U.S. House of Representatives, the 32 candidates who received the most votes in the at-large election would be seated, but each would cast a different number of votes on the floor and in committee. This proposal would allow for representation of minority views in legislative deliberations, as it does in deliberations at shareholder meetings of corporations. Such a concept was proposed in a submission to the 2007 Ontario Citizens' Assembly process. Two real-life examples of weighted voting include the Council of Ministers of the European Union and the US Electoral College .

The Parliament of New Zealand allows proxy voting. Sections 155-156 of the Standing Orders of the New Zealand House of Representatives specify the procedures for doing so. A member can designate another member or a party to cast his vote. However, a party may not exercise proxies for more than 25% of its members (rounded upwards). The New Zealand Listener notes a controversial occurrence of proxy voting. The Labour Party was allowed to cast votes on behalf of Taito Phillip Field, who was frequently absent. Theoretically, this was to be allowed only if a legislator was absent on parliamentary business, public business or pressing private business, such as illness or bereavement.

Until the Republican reforms of 1995 banished the practice, proxy voting was also used in U.S. House of Representatives committees. Often members would delegate their vote to the ranking member of their party in the committee. Republicans opposed proxy voting on the grounds that it allowed an indolent Democratic majority to move legislation through committee with antimajoritarian procedures. That is, the Democratic leader in the committee would successfully oppose the sitting Republican majority by wielding the proxies of absent Democrats.

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein write, "In a large and fragmented institution in which every member has five or six places to be at any given moment, proxy voting is a necessary evil".