Volunteering and clubs

Halfway down this list sits voter à main levée, and the phrase inside it is worth more than the vote it describes. À main levée means, literally, with the hand lifted — lifted off whatever it might have been resting on. In a committee room that gives exactly the sense this list needs: the hands go up, the chair counts them by eye, and nothing is written down, which is why on vote à main levée pour aller plus vite. But the same phrase leaves the meeting and walks into a drawing office, where un croquis à main levée is a sketch made without a ruler, a compass or a straight edge — the hand unsupported again. English needs two unrelated expressions for those two scenes, « a show of hands » and « freehand », and neither one hints at the other. French keeps a single image and lets the room decide which reading applies: a hand held up to be counted, or a hand with nothing underneath it. So learn the phrase whole rather than either translation, and the second reading arrives for nothing.