2000 Speaker of the British House of Commons election for electing a Speaker were changed the following year to a use a secret and exhaustive ballot. This procedure was first used in the Speaker election of 2009. Under the old system for electing Speakers of the House of Commons, a candidate would be nominated and seconded, and alternative candidates would be offered as 'amendments' to that initial motion. In 2000, 11 candidates stepped forward, leading Sir Edward Heath, presiding in his capacity as Father of the House, to have the candidates voted on two at a time. He called Michael Martin to be nominated first. In the event, no
Speaker of the House of Commons (United Kingdom) speakership was part of the process of making the Commons a more cohesive, defined and effective instrument of the king's government. Throughout the medieval and early modern period, every speaker was an MP for a county, reflecting the implicit situation that such shire representatives were of greater standing in the house than the more numerous burgess MPs. Although evidence is almost non-existent, it has been surmised that any vote was by count of head, but by the same token perhaps the fact so very little is said about actual votes suggests that most decisions, at least of a general kind,