Most members of Congress are vaccinated against the coronavirus, and the pandemic is largely waning in the United States. Yet, dozens of House lawmakers continue to take advantage of special rules allowing them to vote remotely on legislation to avoid showing up in the Capitol.
When the House last met to vote on legislation on May 20, nearly three dozen members voted by proxy instead of casting a vote in person, each of them writing to House Clerk Cheryl Johnson they were “physically unable to attend proceedings in the House Chamber due to the ongoing public health emergency.”
Now that COVID-19 is far less of a threat in the Capitol, the use of proxy voting is falling under scrutiny.
All Democrats are vaccinated against the coronavirus, yet 25 elected to vote by proxy on May 20, the day the House was to adjourn for more than three weeks. Nine Republicans also voted by proxy.
Among the missing was Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat. Otto, Beatty’s husband, died on May 14, and a funeral service was scheduled for May 21. Beatty was absent from the Capitol all week but instead had Democratic Reps. Robin Kelly of Illinois and Brenda Lawrence of Michigan cast votes. Beatty used proxy voting for several legislative sessions in March and April, too.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, and Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, had each appeared on the House floor earlier in the month for votes and debate yet cited the COVID-19 public health emergency for their absence on May 20.
It’s a common tactic employed by lawmakers who have been increasingly accused of abusing the proxy voting rule for the sake of convenience, conducting other business back in their districts, going on vacation, or otherwise avoiding a trip to the Capitol to record their votes.
It has also been employed to allow lawmakers who otherwise would not have physically traveled to the Capitol to cast their votes.
The late Alcee Hastings, a Florida Democrat, used proxy voting for months while battling pancreatic cancer.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican, has been voting by proxy for several weeks after emergency surgery to save the vision in his only eye, damaged by an IED during his deployment to Afghanistan while serving as a Navy SEAL.
Some lawmakers, however, are now under scrutiny for repeatedly using proxy voting to dodge an in-person trip to the Capitol.
Rep. Ron Kind, Wisconsin’s longest-serving Democrat, has frequently designated other lawmakers to vote for him.
Dan O’Donnell, a conservative talk show host for Wisconsin’s News/Talk 1130, criticized Kind for skipping in-person votes last month. “Over the past year, though, Kind has turned invisibility into an art form, as he has taken full advantage of the proxy vote system House Speaker Nancy Pelosi installed at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic last May,” O’Donnell wrote for the MacIver Institute, a conservative think tank based in Wisconsin.
“Over the past 11 months, Kind has seemingly used the proxy vote to take 12 long weekends, a monthlong summer vacation late August, and a two-week break for Thanksgiving before apparently ending his year on December 7 and having a proxy vote for him until after the Christmas recess,” O’Donnell wrote.
Kind has filed 18 proxy voting letters with the House clerk, designating proxy voting authority to other lawmakers during different legislative weeks since last year. The Washington Examiner has requested a comment from Kind’s spokeswoman about his decision to vote remotely some of the time.
Democrats pushed through the proxy voting rule on May 15, 2020, due to the dangers of travel and mass gatherings during the pandemic.
Under the rule, lawmakers no longer have to show up to vote. Instead, they can designate another lawmaker who plans to appear in person to vote in their place. The rule allows Pelosi to extend proxy voting unilaterally, and she has done so repeatedly.
It broke a 231-year-old requirement that House lawmakers debate and vote on legislation in person. The rule allows House members in the chamber to vote for up to 10 other lawmakers who designate them as their proxy.
In a letter to lawmakers last month, Pelosi extended proxy voting until July 3, citing a notification from the attending physician of Congress “that a public health emergency is in effect due to a novel coronavirus.” Pelosi sent out the notice on May 17, four days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and President Joe Biden triumphantly announced the pandemic had waned enough to end mask requirements both indoors and outdoors.
But Pelosi, a California Democrat, has kept mask requirements in place along with the proxy voting allowance. According to the Capitol physician, all Democrats are vaccinated, but many Republicans remain unvaccinated, Democratic leaders told reporters, which puts some lawmakers at risk. “What we want to make sure we don’t have is another relapse, a surge,” Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, told reporters in May.
Lawmakers met that day to debate and vote on a critical spending bill passed by just a single vote. The measure would provide nearly $2 billion in federal funding to implement new security measures in and around the Capitol that proponents deemed necessary after the Jan. 6 riot.
Without the proxy voting of the missing 25 Democrats, the measure would have failed. All Republicans voted against it, including the nine who voted that day by proxy.
Republican leaders have staunchly opposed proxy voting and have challenged the move in federal court, calling it unconstitutional.
The House GOP is currently appealing a district judge’s decision to dismiss the case, but the lead attorneys for the Republicans, from the firm Cooper and Kirk, withdrew from the suit in May, according to the blog Law360.com.
The GOP’s legal challenge may soon be moot.
Republicans are in a position to regain the House majority in the 2022 elections. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the Republican most likely to win the speaker’s gavel in a GOP majority, said he’d end proxy voting immediately.
“There’d be no more proxy voting,” McCarthy told Fox News. “Members would have to show up to get paid.”
