House Approves Rule Change to Allow Proxy Voting By Members

(Bloomberg) -- The House voted Friday to let its members serve as proxies in Washington for colleagues who are in quarantine or otherwise homebound during the coronavirus pandemic, setting aside two centuries of precedent.

The change is a low-tech answer by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants to calls by some lawmakers for remote voting, and is intended to be temporary. The change passed 217-189.

Members will be permitted for the next 45 days to travel to the Capitol to carry out explicit instructions on votes for as many as 10 colleagues. The new rules also allow hybrid hearings and virtual committee bill drafting, with some members in-person and some participating remotely.

The special procedures can be extended or renewed if the public health emergency persists or there is a resurgence.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat and a main architect of the plan, questioned GOP opposition to letting the House do its work “safely.”

He said he and Pelosi share the views of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans that it is best for lawmakers to gather in the Capitol, interacting “in a committee room or on the House floor.”

‘Mortal Danger’

But Hoyer said an alternative is needed “when that is not possible because it poses a mortal danger -- 86,000-plus of our fellow citizens have died because they contracted Covid-19.”

The House has mostly stayed away from Washington during the coronavirus crisis on the advice of the Capitol’s attending physician, and when at the Capitol has used a cumbersome voting procedure in which a limited number of members come to the chamber at a time.

Pelosi has noted that the House has more than four times as many members as the GOP-controlled Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has criticized the House for staying away from Washington until bills are ready for a vote.

McCarthy has been critical of any changes that would keep House members away from Washington. He and other Republicans also questioned whether the move is constitutional.

“The Founders would be ashamed,” McCarthy said. “This is not what they envisioned.”

Under the rule change, H.Res. 965, members must be given 24 hours’ notice before any votes on final passage of legislation to give them time, if needed, to secure proxies if they haven’t designated one yet.

Before holding a virtual drafting of legislation, committees are required to hold at least two virtual hearings, one of which may be at the subcommittee level, to let members test the software platform being used.

Committee chairmen also are instructed to “respect disparate times zones of their members when scheduling hearings” and are required to provide a list of any hearing witnesses to the top panel Republican 24 hours prior to the hearing, “to the greatest extent practicable.”

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