Recorded division

What it means

Most questions in the House of Commons are decided on voice vote: the Speaker puts the question, members answer yea or nay, and the Speaker declares the result. Nobody's individual position is recorded. A recorded division is the alternative, and it is what produces the by-name record.

Under Standing Order 45(1) of the House of Commons, when a question is put, any member of a recognized party participating in person may ask that the yeas and nays be entered in the Journals, and a request for a recorded division takes precedence over a request to adopt the motion. Once a recorded division is requested, no further debate on the motion is permitted. Provincial assemblies have their own thresholds in their own standing orders — several require a set number of members to rise — so do not assume the federal rule elsewhere.

This is the single most important fact about voting data in Canada: recorded divisions are the only votes that can be attributed to an individual member. Voice votes are real votes with real legal effect and they leave no individual trace. A member's published voting record is therefore a record of their recorded divisions, not of every decision the chamber made.

A recorded division distinguishes several positions. Yea and nay are the obvious two. Paired members have arranged with a member on the other side that neither will vote, so their absence cancels out. An absent member is simply not recorded. Abstention is recorded where the chamber's rules provide for it.

Because attendance and position are both captured, recorded divisions carry two different signals: how often a member turns up to vote at all, and how they vote when they do. Confusing the two produces bad analysis — a low participation rate can mean a parliamentary secretary travelling on duty, a long illness, or disengagement, and the number alone does not say which.