Conscience vote
Encyclopedia
A conscience vote or free vote is a type of vote in a legislative body
where legislators are allowed to vote according to their own personal conscience rather than according to an official line set down by their political party
.
In many liberal democracies
, particularly those that follow the parliamentary system
of government, the elected members of a legislature who belong to a political party are usually required by that party to vote in accordance with the party line
on significant legislation, on pain of censure or expulsion from the party. Sometimes a particular party member known as the whip
is responsible for maintaining this party discipline
. However, in the case of a conscience vote, a party declines to dictate an official party line to follow and members may vote as they please. In countries where party discipline is less important and voting against one's party is more common, conscience votes are generally less important.
Conscience votes are usually quite rare (except in certain countries) and are often about issues which are very contentious, or a matter on which the members of any single party differ in their opinions, thus making it difficult for parties to formulate official policies. Usually, a conscience vote will be about religious, moral or ethical issues rather than about administrative or financial ones. Matters such as the prohibition of alcohol
, homosexual
law reform and the legality of prostitution
are often subject to conscience votes. In the British House of Commons
there used to be a conscience vote every few years on the restoration of the death penalty, which had been abolished in 1964 (except for treason
, for which it was abolished in 1998 in the Human Rights Act
). It had always been rejected and this practice has now been abandoned. In Britain, laws concerning abortion
have always been subject to a free vote.
The proposed bans on hunting with dogs
proposed by Tony Blair
's government were the subject of several free votes in Parliament from 2001. On each occasion the Commons voted for a ban and the House of Lords
rejected it. In 2004 the Government, trying to placate the Lords and other opponents of a ban, proposed only restriction and licensing of hunting but anti-hunting MPs (mostly Labour
backbencher
s) forced through an amendment which would effect a total ban. Seconds after the vote on the amendment, the Government bowed to pressure and agreed to force the ban through the Lords under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949
. It passed in November 2004.
Other decisions which were taken by a free vote include abandoning the experiment with permanent summer time
and bringing television cameras into Parliament.
Sometimes a vote may be free for some parties but not for others. For instance, when the Conservative
government of Canadian Prime Minister
Stephen Harper
proposed a motion to re-open the debate on
Canada's same-sex marriage laws
, his Conservatives and the opposition Liberals
declared it a free vote for their members, while the Bloc Québécois
and the New Democrats
both maintained party discipline to defeat the measure.
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.
Legislature
A legislature is a kind of deliberative assembly with the power to pass, amend, and repeal laws. The law created by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law. In addition to enacting laws, legislatures usually have exclusive authority to raise or lower taxes and adopt the budget and...
where legislators are allowed to vote according to their own personal conscience rather than according to an official line set down by their political party
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
.
In many liberal democracies
Liberal democracy
Liberal democracy, also known as constitutional democracy, is a common form of representative democracy. According to the principles of liberal democracy, elections should be free and fair, and the political process should be competitive...
, particularly those that follow the parliamentary system
Parliamentary system
A parliamentary system is a system of government in which the ministers of the executive branch get their democratic legitimacy from the legislature and are accountable to that body, such that the executive and legislative branches are intertwined....
of government, the elected members of a legislature who belong to a political party are usually required by that party to vote in accordance with the party line
Party line (politics)
In politics, the line or the party line is an idiom for a political party or social movement's canon agenda, as well as specific ideological elements specific to the organization's partisanship. The common phrase toeing the party line describes a person who speaks in a manner that conforms to his...
on significant legislation, on pain of censure or expulsion from the party. Sometimes a particular party member known as the whip
Whip (politics)
A whip is an official in a political party whose primary purpose is to ensure party discipline in a legislature. Whips are a party's "enforcers", who typically offer inducements and threaten punishments for party members to ensure that they vote according to the official party policy...
is responsible for maintaining this party discipline
Party discipline
Party discipline is the ability of a parliamentary group of a political party to get its members to support the policies of their party leadership. In liberal democracies, it usually refers to the control that party leaders have over its legislature...
. However, in the case of a conscience vote, a party declines to dictate an official party line to follow and members may vote as they please. In countries where party discipline is less important and voting against one's party is more common, conscience votes are generally less important.
Conscience votes are usually quite rare (except in certain countries) and are often about issues which are very contentious, or a matter on which the members of any single party differ in their opinions, thus making it difficult for parties to formulate official policies. Usually, a conscience vote will be about religious, moral or ethical issues rather than about administrative or financial ones. Matters such as the prohibition of alcohol
Prohibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...
, homosexual
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
law reform and the legality of prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
are often subject to conscience votes. In the British House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
there used to be a conscience vote every few years on the restoration of the death penalty, which had been abolished in 1964 (except for treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
, for which it was abolished in 1998 in the Human Rights Act
Human Rights Act 1998
The Human Rights Act 1998 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom which received Royal Assent on 9 November 1998, and mostly came into force on 2 October 2000. Its aim is to "give further effect" in UK law to the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights...
). It had always been rejected and this practice has now been abandoned. In Britain, laws concerning abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
have always been subject to a free vote.
The proposed bans on hunting with dogs
Fox hunting
Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase, and sometimes killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds, and a group of followers led by a master of foxhounds, who follow the hounds on foot or on horseback.Fox hunting originated in its current...
proposed by Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
's government were the subject of several free votes in Parliament from 2001. On each occasion the Commons voted for a ban and the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
rejected it. In 2004 the Government, trying to placate the Lords and other opponents of a ban, proposed only restriction and licensing of hunting but anti-hunting MPs (mostly Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
backbencher
Backbencher
In Westminster parliamentary systems, a backbencher is a Member of Parliament or a legislator who does not hold governmental office and is not a Front Bench spokesperson in the Opposition...
s) forced through an amendment which would effect a total ban. Seconds after the vote on the amendment, the Government bowed to pressure and agreed to force the ban through the Lords under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949
Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949
The Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 are two Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which form part of the constitution of the United Kingdom. Section 2 of the Parliament Act 1949 provides that that Act and the Parliament Act 1911 are to be construed as one.The Parliament Act 1911 The...
. It passed in November 2004.
Other decisions which were taken by a free vote include abandoning the experiment with permanent summer time
Daylight saving time
Daylight saving time —also summer time in several countries including in British English and European official terminology —is the practice of temporarily advancing clocks during the summertime so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less...
and bringing television cameras into Parliament.
Sometimes a vote may be free for some parties but not for others. For instance, when the Conservative
Conservative Party of Canada
The Conservative Party of Canada , is a political party in Canada which was formed by the merger of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada in 2003. It is positioned on the right of the Canadian political spectrum...
government of Canadian Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Canada
The Prime Minister of Canada is the primary minister of the Crown, chairman of the Cabinet, and thus head of government for Canada, charged with advising the Canadian monarch or viceroy on the exercise of the executive powers vested in them by the constitution...
Stephen Harper
Stephen Harper
Stephen Joseph Harper is the 22nd and current Prime Minister of Canada and leader of the Conservative Party. Harper became prime minister when his party formed a minority government after the 2006 federal election...
proposed a motion to re-open the debate on
Members of the 39th Canadian Parliament and same-sex marriage
This article lists the members of the 39th Parliament of Canada and their voting records in regards to the Civil Marriage Act. Bill C-38 amended the Marriage Act of Canada to recognize same-sex marriage . The 39th Parliament was elected at the federal election of January 23, 2006...
Canada's same-sex marriage laws
Same-sex marriage in Canada
On July 20, 2005, Canada became the fourth country in the world and the first country in the Americas to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide with the enactment of the Civil Marriage Act which provided a gender-neutral marriage definition...
, his Conservatives and the opposition Liberals
Liberal Party of Canada
The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative...
declared it a free vote for their members, while the Bloc Québécois
Bloc Québécois
The Bloc Québécois is a federal political party in Canada devoted to the protection of Quebec's interests in the House of Commons of Canada, and the promotion of Quebec sovereignty. The Bloc was originally a party made of Quebec nationalists who defected from the federal Progressive Conservative...
and the New Democrats
New Democratic Party
The New Democratic Party , commonly referred to as the NDP, is a federal social-democratic political party in Canada. The interim leader of the NDP is Nycole Turmel who was appointed to the position due to the illness of Jack Layton, who died on August 22, 2011. The provincial wings of the NDP in...
both maintained party discipline to defeat the measure.
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
James Traficant
James Anthony Traficant, Jr. is a former Democratic Representative in the United States Congress from Ohio . He represented the 17th Congressional District, which centered on his hometown of Youngstown and included parts of three counties in northeast Ohio's Mahoning Valley...
was stripped of his seniority and committee assignments in 2001 when he voted for a Republican, Dennis Hastert
Dennis Hastert
John Dennis "Denny" Hastert was the 59th Speaker of the House serving from 1999 to 2007. He represented as a Republican for twenty years, 1987 to 2007.He is the longest-serving Republican Speaker in history...
, to be Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, or Speaker of the House, is the presiding officer 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.
External links
- Free Votes allowed by ALP and Liberal Party in Australia - 1955 to 2002