The term “yes and no” refers to how members of a governing body vote on a proposal. In the US Senate, a roll-call vote can be requested by a senator to record individual votes. 20% of senators present must ask for it. The call is not the same as asking the question and can be a product of political motivations.
Yes and no is simply a term that refers to how members of a governing body, such as a congress or parliament, voted. Indicates who votes for or against a specific proposal. Voters can say “yes” or “no” on the issue, and some can even vote “present”.
Specifically, in the US Senate, the term can mean a number of different things. A Senator, for example, would prefer a roll call vote on a measure under consideration. In most cases, this is how a record of a particular senator’s vote is written. In asking for a roll-call vote, he asked for a clear record of who voted yes and who voted no.
While a request can be granted at any Senate time in the interest of moving things along, 20 percent of the senators present must ask yes and no before a roll call vote is required. Again, this rule is only in the US Senate. In some legislative bodies, the vote may be cast by a much smaller group of individuals. In some places, an individual may also request a roll call vote.
It should also be noted that asking yes and no is not the same as asking the question. Asking the question means limiting, and in many cases has the effect of closing, the debate on a certain issue. Instead, all those asking yes and no ensure that when the debate is over, all individual votes will be recorded.
In some cases, the call is made on pieces of legislation that are virtually guaranteed to pass under any circumstances. However, some votes a senator gets may not be very popular in his home state. Senators may want to leave open the option that some other candidate from their party may use the vote as an electoral issue. Therefore, the yes-and-no call may be a product of political motivations, rather than a concern for getting the vote correctly counted.
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