Woody Allen famously decreed that 90% of success in life is just showing up.
With that in mind, should the House of Representatives allow members of Congress to vote from home?
How about with very particular criteria?
Oh, you may say, didn’t they try that a few years ago during the pandemic? Lawmakers would literally phone in their votes to a proxy member on the floor. That member in Washington, D.C., would then rifle through a set of index cards, announcing how a member was either in favor or opposed to a given bill, amendment, resolution or motion.
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Should the House of Representatives allow members of Congress to vote from home? (Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)
That constituted voting in the House during the darkest days of the pandemic.
Social distancing spurred proxy voting in the House. It was probably not the best idea to squeeze 435 people into the House at the same time when COVID-19 raged in 2020. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., and former Rep. Ben McAdams, D-Utah, tested positive in mid-March, 2020. McAdams was hospitalized for more than a week after experiencing shortness of breath.
It took a while, but the House eventually adopted remote voting. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., initially had reservations about the practice, but as the pandemic intensified, proponents argued that flying scores of lawmakers from all around the country into Washington and back to their districts wasn’t feasible or maybe safe.
So the House implemented proxy voting.
