Mutton jump

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The so-called " mutton jump " ( pronunciationformally simple: " counting the votes ", for the origin of the term see below ) is a form of voting in the German Bundestag and many state parliaments in which the members of the Bundestag (especially in the case of unclear voting relationships or to determine the quorum ) Passing through different entrance doors express your vocal behavior or document your presence. Similar procedures also exist in other countries.

Procedure in the Bundestag

Marked door in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia in Düsseldorf
Voting doors in the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt

Normally, the members of parliament vote with a simple show of hands (or in the case of the final vote by standing up or staying seated), unless a roll-call vote or a secret ballot with hidden ballot papers is mandatory . However, if the board of the meeting is divided on the result even after a renewed vote, the mutton jump is ordered.

Here, the members of parliament leave the plenary chamber and, after the President has opened the counting process, enter it again through one of three doors, each marked with “Yes”, “No” or “Abstention”. For the counting there are two secretaries at each door, who count the deputies as they pass through the door. The President announces the end of the counting process. The President and the secretaries on duty cast their votes in public. MEPs who enter the Chamber later are not counted and the result is announced. The procedure is regulated in Section 51 (2) of the Rules of Procedure of the German Bundestag (GOBT).

If the quorum is in doubt, it can also be checked with a hammer jump in accordance with § 45 Paragraph 2 GOBT whether more than half of the members are in the meeting room; if this is not the case, the President must terminate the meeting immediately. According to Section 20 (5) of the GOBT, a session closed due to a quorum can be repeated once on the same day, but this can be contradicted by a parliamentary group or five percent of the members of the Bundestag.

In the event of a mutton jump, a beep will sound in all corridors of the Bundestag and a red light on the clocks in the corridors will start to flash to signal the MPs that they should go to the plenary hall as soon as possible. Normally only those MPs who are currently on “session duty” are there. In order to give their colleagues sufficient time to get together for the mutton jump, some of them therefore regularly stay in the plenary chamber for some time at the beginning because the vote cannot start until all Members have left it.

An alternative to the Hammelsprung is the roll call vote according to § 52 GOBT, which, however, must be requested explicitly by a parliamentary group or at least 5% of the MPs. An electronic counting process, such as that used in Russia , Italy , France or Switzerland , was rejected after a short test phase in the German Bundestag on the grounds that it could be manipulated.

In other countries

Division in the House of Commons in 2012
British Bell Division

Similar procedures for ascertaining voting results are used in many democracies , for example in the British House of Commons and House of Lords . The English term for this is division (of the assembly / of the house) . This is used when the speaker cannot clearly see which side has the majority or his assessment is questioned. He announces this with the words “ Division! Clear the lobby! " on. Since votes are traditionally made in Great Britain by acclamation (“ Aye ” or “ No ”), this can regularly be the case. The MPs then have eight minutes to gather in one of the two lobbies . These are then marked with the words “ Lock the doors! " closed. When leaving the vestibules, the votes of the MPs are counted by name by their previously appointed colleagues ( tellers ) and then communicated to the speaker. Similar to the German Bundestag, there is also a system in London for alerting members of parliament: in all parliament buildings and even in some pubs around Westminster Palace that are popular with members of parliament , so-called division bells are installed, which ring in the event of a vote.

In rare cases, it is also used in the Swiss commune of the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden . If several thousand people are present, the result may remain doubtful.

history

A similar voting procedure has been described by the Roman people's assembly , the concilium plebis , applied. Here, two bridges were built through which the masses were counted in the voting process. The voting procedure, known in German as "mutton jump", was introduced into the Rules of Procedure of the Reichstag on April 9, 1874 at the request of the Vice President of the German Reichstag , Hans Victor von Unruh , and in November 1874 also into the Rules of Procedure of the Prussian House of Representatives .

The term mutton jump is a word created in everyday parliamentary language, such as voting cattle , bellhammers or workhorses . No evidence has yet been found that counting sheep was so called.

The architect of the Reichstag building, Paul Wallot , used the term “mutton jump” in an inlay picture. In 1894, above one of the voting doors - the yes door - in the Berlin Reichstag building , he portrayed Cyclop Polyphemus, blinded by Odysseus, stroking his rams on the back because he believed that while sitting on their backs, Odysseus and his companions would want to flee from captivity . In fact, they clung to the rams' fur, hanging under their belly. The no-door showed the Silesian fairytale and legendary figure Rübezahl . In the Imperial Diet there were only two doors, one for counting the yes and one for counting the no.

At the meeting on April 9, 1874, the idea of ​​using an "electrical voting machine" was rejected. Such a device had been offered to the Reichstag by the company Siemens & Halske , but its installation was rejected after a lengthy discussion with the note that this form of voting was not compatible with the dignity of the Reichstag.

In the first 19 Bundestag (1949–2019) there were a total of 588 mutton jumps.

literature

Web links

Commons : Hammelsprung  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Hammelsprung  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b mutton jump. Bundestag, December 18, 2019, accessed on June 1, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Innsbrucker Nachrichten of November 11, 1902 with a description of the Siemens & Halske voting machine
  3. ↑ Klaus von Beyme: The political system of the Federal Republic of Germany. An introduction. 11th edition, Wiesbaden 2010, p. 310.