House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Thursday that she’s concerned about the health of Congress’ lawmakers. But any changes to voting procedure, she cautioned, aren’t going to happen soon, at least in the House.
“We aren’t there yet, and we’re not going to be there no matter how many letters somebody sends in,” Pelosi, 80, said by telephone from her home in San Francisco. “There are some technologies that you might think are workable but they might not be secure.”
Committees of Congress are rethinking how to move legislation forward without holding old-fashioned “paper hearings,” in person. The Senate Armed Services committee, for example, said Tuesday that key hearings on the annual National Defense Authorization Act are being postponed while consideration is given to unspecified “alternative hearing processes.”
The last time Congress met, the Senate slowed down its roll call to thin out the number of members sharing the chamber at any one time. The House on March 27 spread its members from the floor into the empty visitors gallery overhead, filling every other seat, to pass the $2.2 trillion bill.
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“At this point we’re trying to figure out logistics of doing hearings, and we’re looking into whether we can do virtual or Zoom hearings,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
From the House Rules Committee:
The constitutionality of remote voting is an untested principle. As a threshold question, this uncertainty should give the House pause from transitioning wholesale to any remote voting or “virtual presence” scheme of conducting business. If challenged, remote voting would be a novel question for a court and there is no guarantee of a favorable ruling affirming its constitutionality. Engaging in an untested practice, especially when considering complex and critical legislation in response to an historic pandemic, presents risks.
Article I of the Constitution mentions in various places the need to bring Members together to conduct business. The Constitution speaks of “meeting” (Art. I, Sec. 4, Cl. 2), “assembling” (Art. I, Sec. 3, Cl. 2), and “attendance” (Art. I, Sec. 5, Cl. 1) in describing how Congress would conduct its business. Yet, the Constitution also explicitly provides each house with the ability to make its own rules (Art. I, Sec. 5, Cl. 2).
Given this uncertainty and the risk of pursuing a novel mode of voting on legislation, working within the current rules and practices of the House – such as passing legislation via unanimous consent or voice vote – is preferable. However, should the situation deteriorate in such a way that remote voting becomes necessary, any changes to current House rules must be as analogous to the current in-person voting practices as possible and must have appropriate safeguards in place to ensure transparency, fairness, and legitimacy.
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