Vote in your pajamas in sunny Catalunya

For the past few months, a cynical observer might think, Washington has carried out a long piece of performance art detailing the many ways in which passing legislation is hard, even with the White House and Congress in one party’s hands. There are holds, filibusters, floor motions, cloture, and sundry other rules. The Senate is a small-c conservative institution, delimited from making radical change in a thousand ways.

The biggest obstacle of all is the ticking clock. Every motion takes up floor time. There is only so much floor time. And, when it snows in Washington, there is less. Indeed, the Senate was briefly open for business today. But it won’t be tomorrow or, probably, the next day, many thanks to Snowpocalypse 3. Senators need to be present to vote. They won’t be, so the whole government apparatus will be shut down.

This got me to thinking: Do really inclement countries let their legislatures vote remotely?

The answer in the United States is no — though it has been proposed before.  The first country I thought of was Estonia, which has the most tech-savvy government on the planet and, I imagine, rather nasty winters. There, you can cast your national electoral ballot from the comfort of your living room sofa, over the Internet. (There are actually a number of countries and localities that allow this.) But, it seems, members of parliament need to be present to give the up or down on legislation.

I only found one government that allows remote legislative voting — in, of all places, sunny Catalunya, Spain. In that region, which includes Barcelona, local representatives can request permission to send in their vote from home if they need to tend to a sick family member, for instance. No details on whether they also do it if hit with 22 inches of white stuff.