A group of House Republicans were looking to utilize proxy voting as a way to challenge the remote voting practice in the House legally and potentially derail Democrats’ sweeping healthcare, climate, and tax bill from becoming law via a procedural gambit on Friday.
The conservative lawmakers who were conjuring up the plan — including House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-PA), Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX), Warren Davidson (R-OH,) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), among others, many of whom have never used the practice of absentee voting in the past — were looking to have as many GOP lawmakers vote by proxy as possible to deny Democrats a physical quorum, which they argue would draw the legitimacy of the bill’s passage into question.
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While Republicans’ previous efforts to launch a legal challenge against proxy voting, including a lawsuit against Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on the matter, did not go far, multiple members of the House Freedom Caucus and conservatives argued that the move would have provided a new argument against the practice, which was extended through late September by Pelosi earlier this week.
“We think proxy voting is not constitutional. There was a lawsuit, but the court avoided deciding the matter. They basically just said, you cannot sue Nancy Pelosi, so what would actually make that ripe and where they would have to make a decision is if the quorum wasn’t established, a majority was only present by proxy,” Davidson told the Washington Examiner.
“So if we had less than 216 people in this case physically present, we think we would have a ripe challenge to the concept of proxy voting, and perhaps to this law because we weren’t constitutionally assembled. We weren’t lawfully assembled because we didn’t actually have a quorum in accordance with our rules.”
The group ultimately fell short of garnering enough members to partake in the gambit for it to be successful, with some citing they did not have enough time to rally the number of members needed to pull it off.
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Dozens of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle voted by proxy on Friday on the substantial piece of partisan legislation.
The bill ultimately passed in a party-line 220-207 vote.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has vowed to do away with the practice of proxy voting if Republicans take back the majority in November.
