Good riddance to proxy voting in the House

Although House Republicans will have a slim majority in the 118th Congress, they are currently embroiled in an internal struggle over the future of their party and its leadership. It remains unclear whether they will manage to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the conference’s clear choice for speaker, on the first ballot on Jan. 3 or later. Also unclear is whether organized factions, including the House Freedom Caucus, will force changes to the chamber’s rules that rebalance power away from the speaker, whoever wins the job.

But Republicans are united on one procedural item: They will put an end to the proxy voting procedure that the Democrat-led House put in place on May 15, 2020. This may seem like the ultimate procedural “inside baseball,” something that few American citizens care about, but in fact it is a matter of high principle — and one on which Republicans are absolutely right.

Proxy voting is guilty of high crimes against our constitutional order, but it also is worth noting the procedure’s misdemeanors against Congress’s integrity.

As Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) pointed out in testimony to the Committee on House Administration, the system of proxy voting has been fueled by members’ willingness to simply lie by attesting that they are prevented from physically attending House proceedings “due to the ongoing public health emergency.” Certainly, some absences were caused by COVID-19 infections or reasonable self-quarantines, but at this point most proxy votes probably are cast to make members’ lives a little easier — to free them up to meet with constituents, to raise campaign funds, or perhaps go on vacation rather than showing up for votes. 

It is shameful that the House has developed a culture of casual dishonesty, even in a matter of following self-imposed rules. To fulfill its role as the “people’s House,” the chamber requires a high degree of trust from the American people — and this kind of blatant disrespect for the truth badly undermines its trustworthiness.

But even if Congress changed its rules about proxy voting, so that members didn’t have to bend the truth to exercise the privilege, the procedure still would need to go. It’s not hard to understand why — indeed, it’s right there in the name of the institution. As Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) noted succinctly in arguing against the adoption of proxy voting back in May 2020: “The word ‘congress’ literally means the act of coming together and meeting.”

Citizens may imagine that their “job” is to cast votes to determine who represents them, and that their representatives’ job is then to cast votes on their behalf. But casting votes is really only a small part of the legislator’s role. Far more important is participating in figuring out which issues deserve attention and what sort of accommodations different groups can live with. For that to succeed, face-to-face encounters between members are essential, because they enable lawmakers to size each other up and figure out what really matters most to people around the country. Even if compromise is sometimes impossible today, knowing one’s adversary as something more than a “No” vote creates room for accommodation tomorrow.

In extreme cases, House members relying on proxy voting have almost absented themselves from Washington, apparently unconcerned with knowing other members. At one point this year, Hawaii Public Radio reported that Rep. Kai Kahele (D-Hawaii) had voted by proxy 120 times out of 125 total votes. Kahele is on his way out of the House, having pursued an unsuccessful bid for governor; it is no surprise that, out of 435 members, some view their jobs merely as stepping stones rather than serious commitments.

But even for more dutiful members, a culture of proxy voting is likely to have a corrosive effect. Our democracy thrives on coalitions of strange bedfellows, many of which bloom out of unlikely relationships struck up after chance encounters in corridors of the Capitol, or even meetings on the House floor during (in-person) votes. When members phone in their votes, those meetings don’t happen and the relationships never get started. Our collective possibilities are diminished when our members reduce themselves to being remote-voting automatons.

Note that this is not an argument against all virtual presence in the halls of Congress. If a committee wants to get testimony from a witness for whom travel to Washington would be difficult, it may well make sense to rely on a video feed. The use of technology in such cases enlarges legislators’ capacity to interface with experts of all sorts without erecting any artificial barrier between members themselves.

Proxy voting, on the other hand, allows the self-imposed isolation so many of us (understandably) undertook with the arrival of COVID-19 to linger on as a permanent infection of our democratic culture. Whatever else may come in the 118th House, bringing the era of proxy voting to an overdue end is a wonderful way for Republicans to demonstrate their commitment to representative government.

Philip Wallach is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.