REMOTE VOTING MOVES FORWARD

The House Rules Committee on Thursday advanced a measure to enact a set of changes that will allow lawmakers to vote and hold meetings remotely during the coronavirus pandemic.

The full House is slated to adopt the rules changes on Friday, when lawmakers are also planning to vote on Democrats’ $3 trillion coronavirus relief package.

Enacting the changes will allow House Democrats to revive legislative and oversight work that has largely been on hold for the last two months due to safety concerns about gathering all 430 members and their staffs together in the Capitol during the pandemic.

The Rules Committee approved the resolution along party lines, 8-4, after six hours of debate with dozens of failed GOP amendments to limit the changes, foreshadowing what’s expected to also be a partisan vote when it hits the House floor given the widespread opposition from Republicans to voting remotely.

The changes would enable proxy voting, in which absent lawmakers could authorize colleagues physically present in the House chamber to cast votes on their behalf. But a single member would be limited to serving as a designated proxy for a maximum of 10 members, meaning that dozens of lawmakers would still have to be physically present in the Capitol. And any lawmakers who still want to cast their own votes in person could still do so.

Committees would also be permitted to conduct hearings, depositions and markups of legislation virtually. There would be some flexibility for committees to conduct business meetings either in a “hybrid” setting with some lawmakers in a room and others participating remotely — which the Senate has done in recent days — or with everyone dialing in from afar.