Under MMP most votes arrive in Parliament tidy and pre-counted. The parties each vote as a bloc and when a vote is called they announce that total to the clerks who are Parliament’s secretariat.
All the clerks need to do is add up the totals, easy-peasy. Possibly not for me, but for most people.
But occasionally it is all done very differently. MPs get to cast a Personal Vote on conscience issues (sex and alcohol-adjacent topics mostly). When that happens MPs abandon the blocs (mostly) and vote the old-fashioned way. They are called into the debating chamber and then file out again through one of two doors helpfully named the Ayes and Noes doors. They literally vote with their feet.
At that point though it can all go horribly wrong.
The lintel of the Ayes Door in Parliament's Debating Chamber. During a Personal Vote, if you want to vote FOR the proposal this is how you leave the room. To vote against it you cross the floor and exit via the opposite door. Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
Traditionally (during one of these Personal Votes), the total votes for each side of a question are counted by an MP. Someone who is heading out a door anyway is nominated as a ‘Teller’ for all the MPs voting the same way. But it turns out that MPs are not very good at counting. (Hopefully that doesn’t apply to the Minister of Finance).
The whole thing is muddled and slow and there are frequent errors – sometimes huge ones (more on that later). Admittedly, the process is complicated by MPs who do not turn up to vote in person, but give someone else their vote to cast 'by proxy'. In that case the Teller must count both the actual bodies and also the ghosts (the proxy votes).
These ghostly proxy votes might sound like the kind of votes Donald Trump was hoping the Secretary of State would “find” for him in Georgia, but these ones are legitimate. Legitimate but confusing.
The Tellers mark all this down by crossing out present MPs' names on specially printed tally sheets (see below for an example), and then the Clerk's team count them up and cross-check them, comparing the Ayes and Noes sheets against each other to check MPs don’t magically vote both ways. Yes, it does happen – you can see examples on the voting sheets below.
A mistake might occur if, say, an MP gives a colleague their proxy but then turns up to vote anyway, but forget to tell their colleague. Then they each go through a different door. I don't know how, but it happens.
One MP, two votes. Someone alert the Leader of the Opposition.
Three years ago when Parliament was last updating its rules the Standing Orders Committee noted that the traditional Personal Vote counting method was slow and problematic. They suggested trialling some form of electronic voting, but that was also found wanting.
Then Covid put a pause on the need for a solution for three years. Rather than traipse through doors and assemble in a lobby to breathe virus at each other, MPs' votes were compiled and declared by their party whips, even for Personal Votes.
The Personal Vote tally sheets for both Ayes and Nays votes from recent alcohol related members bills. Crossed-out names voted for that side of a question. The letter P denotes a proxy vote. Marks in red are corrections. Photo: Phil Smith
A special talent for counting
Last month, for the first time since Covid, MPs again had conscience issues to vote on. Two of them. On the same day there were Members' Bills relating to alcohol from both Ian McKelvie (National-Rangitīkei), and from Chloe Swarbrick (Green-Central Auckland).
MPs returned to the traditional 'voting with your feet' door method and nominated MPs to be Tellers. Across the two bills were four vote totals to count across two votes. With four cracks at it the Tellers managed three wrong tallies and a fourth that had various corrections (which were at least caught before being announced).
One vote missed five Labour MPs when their proxy votes were omitted. That was exemplary compared to the other vote when an amazing 25 National Party MPs weren’t included. That’s nearly three-quarters of National MPs missing out.
It wasn’t a plot, it was their own Junior Whip who, by her own description made “an administrative error”. It appears she didn't count the proxy votes because she noticed the proxied MPs were absent. (Like something from Alice in Wonderland, where you must be present to have someone vote for you in your absence).
Both mistakes were caught and the votes corrected the next day. Thankfully neither mistake altered the outcome of the vote (which would be much more embarrassing).
That experience possibly galvanised action on trying another method, and so amateur Tellers are gone and MPs have agreed to leave the counting to the professionals. The change is a Sessional Order and so is just a temporary trial measure; but all going well it will likely be adopted in the updated Standing Orders for the next Parliament.
The Tellers will now be the clerks, the staff who manage the House and Select Committees and generally make the place function efficiently. Clerks are careful, they count all the normal votes, and they have the advantage of actually knowing all the rules.
Of course, errors inevitably happen, but the clerks are very unlikely to forget 25 votes all at once. That takes a special kind of talent.
The Personal Vote tally sheets for both Ayes and Nays votes from recent alcohol related members bills. Crossed-out names voted for that side of a question. The letter P denotes a proxy vote. Marks in red are corrections. Photo: Phil Smith
