First Public Vote For Speaker

During the first few decades of Congress, Speakers had been elected to the House by a secret ballot. In 1839, the rules were changed to require a public roll-call vote for Speaker in which the votes of individual members were known and recorded. Although this change may not seem like much, in fact it was a profound one.

A recorded vote gives more power to the party leaders, especially to the Speaker. When votes are kept secret, members can vote for whichever candidate they want -- even if that candidate happens to belong to a different political party -- and the leaders of his or her party will never know whether the member was disloyal. When the vote is recorded, party leaders can keep track of how the members of their party vote. This permits them to enforce party discipline more effectively. Party leaders can then "punish" disloyal members by doing such things as assigning them to undesirable committees or killing legislation that the disloyal member supports.