To the OP, apparently there was a secret ballot in February where Cheney won with over 2/3 of the vote. GOP not satisfied with people voting their convictions decided on this second vote that was not secret and she loses. Read into that what you will.
Voice votes happen all the time. This is news to you?
Difficult as it may be to believe, there are a lot of people unfamiliar with the intricacies of parliamentary procedures and Robert’s Rules of Order.
I was on a Congressional Debate team, was a volunteer debate coach, majored in political science in college, and I don’t have a firm grasp on the internal voting procedures of the Republican House Caucus. If you had asked me yesterday if Republican House leadership elections and recalls could be conducted by simple voice vote, I would have had no idea.
There’s really no reason to expect anyone not immersed in the subject to know what a voice vote is or how it’s conducted. And there’s less than no reason to chide someone for not knowing something which you do and asking questions about it, on a board dedicated to exactly that.
I’m sorry, but I do get frustrated when people comment on the politics, the law and the Constitution, when they don’t know what they’re talking about. In GD/PE, I mean. Voice votes probably happen every day Congress is in session.
During the big kerfuffle about SB1 just yesterday, Rules Committee Chairman Klobuchar held several voice votes. This is nothing new or different.
@QuickSilver didn’t make an ignorant comment. They asked a question. It’s great that you know how common voice votes are, and how they work. Not everyone does. I’m fairly certain most Americans wouldn’t.
Because most Republicans are hell bent on kissing the ass of coastal elite Trump, in an effort to curry favor with Trump’s voters, regardless of what you heard. Later in the day here, it’s obvious that what you heard wasn’t true. There seems to be a lot of “wasn’t true” when it comes to Trump.
A lot of times, everybody already has a good idea of what the outcome is going to be. Sometimes the people on the losing side will bellow it out, acting on the (sometimes) faint hope that they’ll sound louder than the other side. The trick seldom works.
It should be noted that this wasn’t in any way a vote of Congress. It was a vote of the Republican Party selecting who should be in a position of authority in the party caucus.
Cheney was the House Republican Conference Chair, a position that is not official in any way. Their website explains what it entails.
The House Republican Conference is the organizational vehicle for all Republican Members of the House and their staff. The Conference hosts regular meetings of House Republicans and is the primary vehicle for communicating the party’s message to Members. The House Republican Conference has a Chairman who directs day-to-day operations of the Conference office and staff and is assisted by an elected Vice-Chairman and a Secretary.
The Republican caucus could assign the position by reading the entrails of a goat and it would be exactly as legal and just as immune to criticism.
This is an important part of it. When one of the sides has done the private polling and knows the vote is lost, they may just decide to not ask for a counted vote (either open or secret) to avoid a useless exercise that will only paint targets on those who stood on the losing side. In this particular case, just as the earlier secret vote allowed her to prevail then without outing her supporters, not disputing the voice vote now that she knew she would lose saves her remaining supporters from being picked for extra payback.
She is indeed, being consistent with her position – you enter play by the established rules, you accept the result of the established rules even if it’s against you.
And yes, for a large share of the Conference including McCarthy, it’s a matter of being able to create a narrative by which they can some day say say “look we were just saying ‘yeah, sure Don, whatever you say’ so we could move on from yesterday’s news, to the next thing we can attack Biden on”. Because they are that pathetic.
The US House and parties will have their own voting procedures (and they may not be consistent) but how it works on the antipodean side of the puddle:
The Presiding Office will call for a vote on the voices. ie “The Ayes for, the Nays against” then following the voices automatically, regardless of number of voices or volume, says “I think the Ayes have it” because governments don’t put to a vote measures which they expect to lose.
If there is no dissent to that ruling, that’s the end of the matter.
If the Nays want to dispute the result, or want the vote to count, or merely want to kill some time they make their dissent known, usually just by saying “No”
The Presiding Officer then asks “Is a division called for?”
If that question is challenged by more than one member of parliament, a division is called.
The Clerk of the House then pushes a button which sets of the bells in 2,700 clocks within the parliamentary buildings. They ring for 4 minutes while members make their way to the chamber, then the chamber doors are locked. The House then divides with the Ayes leaving their seats and congregating in an areas to the right of the Presiding Officer, the Nayes move to the left and the abstentions staying seated.
A count is taken and voting is recorded.
Thank you.
I don’t think party caucuses are bound to honor parliamentary procedure and everyone concerned just wanted to wash their hands of it quickly. I think Liz Cheney should claim that the vote was stolen and she’s still in the GOP leadership.
Because that would turn it from a witch trial into a witch hunt.
Legally? No, of course not. They set up their own rules. They do, as it happens, follow parliamentary rules, and in this case there haven’t been any claims of irregularities.
I’m not so sure that Liz Cheney did, but, yes, it’s clear most members of the caucus wanted to just get this over with, which is why they went with a couple of statements and a quick voice vote. Which, in an of itself, is perfectly reasonable.
I get the sentiment behind this, but fighting fire with fire just results in everyone’s house being burnt down.
It’s not really her house anymore.
Obviously it was. Your remark set off a bout of junior modding that adds nothing to the thread. No warning.
Please, no junior modding.
Of course it is. She’s still a member of the House Republican Caucus. But beyond that, she’s still a Member of Congress, and an American. The suggestion that the proper response to the undermining of institutional norms should be to undermine them from the other side baffles me.
I think @BobLibDem was being facetious. But I’ve seen plenty of serious suggestions, on this board, along the same lines.
Yes, it was typed with tongue firmly in cheek.
As expected, Republicans voted to name Elise Stefanik to replace Cheney this morning by a vote of 134-46. She was opposed by Chip Roy, who argued that she was not a real conservative. He is of course entirely correct in that – she voted against the Trump tax cut and before the last couple of years she was the kind of (relatively) moderate Republican that one would expect from her purplish NY district.
But she went all in on Trump when opposing his impeachment and more recently in spewing his stolen election lies. And that’s all that matters in today’s GOP. Chip Roy, who is as arch-conservative as they come, was already on Trump’s shit list for recognizing the electors as valid and this probably seals his doom in his next primary.