A fiery fight between Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) over remote voting for new parents fizzled out over the weekend with a compromise to bring back vote pairing, a system dating back to the 1800s that would essentially require a Democrat to willingly cast off their vote to offset a GOP absence.
After nine Republicans voted against a procedural rule vote last week, the House was brought to a standstill. Leadership canceled the rest of the week’s votes and tried to create a new path forward once it was clear Johnson’s hands were tied. At the center of the argument was Luna’s proxy voting bill for new parents, which allowed a member to vote by proxy for 12 weeks. Johnson and much of the GOP conference are staunchly opposed to this measure, calling it “unconstitutional.”
But a conference call over the weekend now promises a return to vote pairing. The system allows an absent member to coordinate with a present representative on the opposite side of a vote to announce that the present member is forming a “pair” with the absent one. For example, if a Republican was planning to vote “no” on a measure, they’d look to pair with a Democrat to vote “present” to offset the absence.
Two House lawmakers used the practice in 2003 during a vote related to Medicare, according to the Congressional Research Service.
This poses the question: Will Republicans be able to find a Democrat wanting to pair with them and cancel out their vote?
Several House Democrats don’t think so.
Rules Committee ranking member Jim McGovern (D-MA) laughed and said “no” when asked if any Democrats would choose to engage in vote pairing.
“That’s a glorified way to say you’re missing a vote,” McGovern told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a nothingburger… You have to hope that somebody’s absent on the other side.”
Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH) also said he didn’t think a single Democrat would participate, adding that he was “baffled” that proxy voting became a controversial issue, calling the Republican deal “so complicated and confusing and impractical.”
“It’s just so dumb, it’s the dumbest response,” Landsman told the Washington Examiner. “It’s the dumbest response to the most simple, straightforward solution to new parents being able to vote by proxy.”
Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA), one of the original co-sponsors of Luna’s bill, expressed her displeasure with Luna and Johnson’s deal in a statement to the Washington Examiner, arguing that supporters on the Left are going to continue pushing for modernization of voting “even if it takes a Democratic majority to do so.”
“From the very beginning, our shared goal has been to support new parents so they can do their jobs and vote on behalf of their constituents while also taking care of themselves and their families,” Jacobs said. “Unfortunately, this ‘deal’ falls short of that goal – silencing new parents and perpetuating the status quo and the notion that Congress is ineffective and obsolete.”
Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-CO), Luna’s co-lead on the measure, thanked Luna for her work on the bill to “make the House a more welcoming place for families.”
“But the reality is — this outcome does not address the barriers we’ve fought so hard to overcome. … I know you are just as disappointed as I am about this outcome, but our fight is far from over,” Pettersen said.
House Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) deferred to Pettersen during a press conference on Monday on the subject, but he said this “seems like a very weird hill” for Republicans “to die on.”
House leadership is acknowledging the vagueness of vote pairing puts the chamber in a grey area.
“I don’t know how it’s actually gonna look,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain (R-MI) told the Washington Examiner during a Monday roundtable with reporters. “I mean, I understand the process of how it is supposed to work. How many people take advantage of it? How many people use it? That’ll — time will tell.”
If Democrats don’t play ball with Republicans on vote pairing, Republicans can find someone on their side of the aisle to vote present, Luna said. This has historical precedent, with vote pairing being used in 2018 during the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
When Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), who supported Kavanaugh, could not make it back to Washington for the vote because his daughter was getting married, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) voted present instead of no.
The decision to switch from new parent proxy voting to vote pairing was an unexpected development on Sunday, after Luna swore for weeks she was “right” and Johnson was “wrong.” She also stressed that she went through the proper House channels to force a vote on her bill through a discharge petition, and her legislation deserved a “fair shot.”
Had her bill gone to the floor, with the support she garnered from Democrats and a handful of Republicans, the measure would have likely passed. But allowing it to come to the floor in the first place spelled danger for Johnson, after hard-liners promised to hold up floor proceedings if the proxy voting bill got a vote.
“No harm, no foul,” Johnson told reporters Monday evening, denying that he “cut a deal” with Luna by bringing back the dated voting system. “It solved her concerns so that was a great thing.”
Luna told reporters on Monday that she faced the reality that those hard-liners would not allow her bill to come up “under any circumstance” and, this weekend, reached a point where she just wanted to protect the discharge petition system. Republicans had sought to alter the process in the Rules Committee last week, ultimately leading to its failure.
“It’s a start in the right direction,” Luna said.
The Florida Republican is more upset with the “national campaign” to “basically lie” about what happened on the floor last week. House leaders like Johnson blamed the nine Republicans who voted against the rule, and Luna accused Republicans of portraying her as anti-election integrity since the failed rule meant a delayed vote on the SAVE Act.
Luna said she wouldn’t comment on whether it was leadership pushing the smear campaign against her, but she called it “very disheartening.”
“If you have rules, and then you don’t adhere to the rules because you don’t like the outcome of them, then there are no rules,” Luna said. “So that’s effectively what’s happening, and you’re going to see the same faction that was vocal against this going to be vocal against the president’s agenda this week.”
LUNA AND JOHNSON STRIKE DEAL TO END PROXY VOTING FEUD
The House will vote on a procedural rule for the SAVE Act and No Rogue Rulings Act on Tuesday afternoon. Tucked into the rule is language that would table Luna’s proxy voting bill, as well as install vote pairing.
“I think it’s a lousy deal and it’s kind of embarrassing, and [Republicans] must think so too because it’s going to be deemed passed when the rule passes,” McGovern said. “So there’ll be no separate vote on this, no debate on this.”
Lauren Green contributed to this report.
