Banging Gavels Simultaneously

by Karl Kurtz

I love the rituals of legislatures.  Here's a nice one from an AP story about adjournment of the South Dakota Legislature on Monday this week:

The two chambers officially received reports on the bills signed by the governor. The doors in the back of each chamber were then opened so House Speaker Tim Rave of Baltic and Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard, who presides in the Senate, could see each other. They then rapped their gavels to adjourn both chambers at the same time.

Does any other legislature have this same tradition of banging gavels simultaneously in the house and senate?  In our conversations about this around the office, we can't think of many capitols where the presiding officers of the house and senate can easily see each other, even with doors open, either because of a lack of line of sight or distance.  What about Montana, whose capitol has a very similar floor plan to that of South Dakota?

4/1 update: Be sure to see Dan Vock's comment below, which contains a link to a great story from 2008, "When sessions end, gavels and hankies fall," from Stateline.org about end of session rituals.  I had seen the story at the time (in fact, Meagan Dorsch wrote about it in The Thicket) but had forgotten about it.

South Dakota dome photo credit: Eric Oxendorf

Comments

[Jason]

Georgia does...

[Dan]

Florida, North Carolina and Washington could possibly too... They can at least see a hankie dropped in the rotundas. http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=320042

[joe]

Wouldn't work in Montana unless they were watching each other on TV.

[Gerry]

North Carolina does both the simultaneous door opening where the two presiding officers can see each other and the hankie

[H. Atse.]

Georgia has the same tradition. Ours was just a few hours ago. It was replete with simultaneous banging of the gavel in both the House and Senate, tossing torn stacks of paper in the air, and applause from both the floor and gallery.