A parliamentary vote is a method of voting used in parliaments and other legislative bodies. It involves the parliamentary body counting its ‘yeas and nays’ to establish how members, or delegations, voted on a particular matter. It is used primarily when voting is done on a formal basis and the results are made public.
While the main function of a parliamentary system is lawmaking, other functions are also performed by these legislatures. These include setting the agenda, scrutinising the executive and approving the budget. Parliamentary systems are found in many countries including most of Europe, Australia and New Zealand. They are also employed by the devolved nations of England, Scotland and Wales.
Most parliamentary democracies use a plurality electoral system where the party with the most votes in each electoral district wins. This has the disadvantage that it fails to promote the formation of stable coalition governments.
Some parliamentary systems also adopt proportional representation in addition to plurality. West Germany pioneered this hybrid’mixed-member proportional’ (MMP) system after World War II. In MMP, half the representatives are elected from single-member districts and the rest are elected through a party list. The seats that parties win from constituencies are subtracted from their list allocations to make their overall delegations more proportional to the number of party votes they receive.
Another method of checking the power of a parliamentary body is to allow for the dissolution of the parliament between elections. While some parliamentary democracies, such as the United Kingdom and New Zealand, have laws that require a supermajority of the legislative body to approve of a motion for early dissolution, these can be bypassed by enacting legislation that amends or ignores the existing requirements.
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