If tuning into CSPAN and CSPAN2 isn’t enough to convince people you’re a masochistic political junkie (though truth be told, most of the time it is for Prime Minister’s Questions from the British House of Commons on Wednesday morning!)…noticing that the graphics used to show the vote tally during the House of Representatives recorded votes has not significantly changed since 1979 certainly will!
And whilst we’re on the subject of the yeas and nays…even though recorded votes in the House are usually set for 15 minutes (though 5 minutes is not uncommon for relatively uncontroversial procedural votes), I can’t remember the last time I ever saw a recorded vote last only 15 minutes. More often than not, it’s closer to 30-45 minutes if the House is feeling particularly spry and last night’s votes to turf the Electoral vote objections went an hour over the time…all with the “Time Remaining” indicator stuck at “0:00”.
Even allowing for the 435 member House being broken up into voting groups to maintain social distancing in the pandemic era…I’ve seen glaciers move faster than those people vote on the called question!
Now the Senate doesn’t screw around. When the motion for the clerk to call the roll is ordered (either for a vote or a quorum call to herd the Senators back to the floor), they go straight through that list of 100 Senators in about 10 minutes and then pick off the stragglers in the next 2-3 minutes after that. Once that long ballot paper is folded and handed off to the President (pro tem if the VP isn’t sitting that session), they’ve got to go through the clerks to amend their vote.
It would be fascinating to see how much time is wasted in the House for votes that go over the proscribed time. I suspect over a given Congressional season, it’s easily over a day!