The effort to change House rules to allow recent mothers and fathers to vote by proxy is picking up steam, and proponents can now circumvent leadership and force a floor vote in the coming weeks.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., who has led the charge with Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo., filed a discharge petition that accumulated signatures from a majority of House members by Tuesday evening.
“I’m hopeful that we’re going to actually get it passed,” Pettersen told reporters Tuesday from the House steps while holding her son, who is a little more than a month old. “It’s a bipartisan issue. There’s a lot of really intense and chaotic things happening here in Washington. It’s great that we can have something that we can come together on and support each other when we’re new parents.”
This latest proxy voting push began with Pettersen, who announced in September that she was pregnant and had to miss votes around her delivery in January. Luna, who gave birth herself in 2023, introduced a separate proposal last Congress to create a proxy voting carve-out for parents, but it saw no movement amid opposition from Republican leadership.
This Congress, they teamed up on a resolution that would allow for new parents to vote by proxy for up to 12 weeks. Pettersen introduced the legislation in January, and Luna filed the discharge petition earlier this week.
A dozen Republicans had signed on to the petition as of 6 p.m. on Tuesday. On the steps earlier in the day, Pettersen worked to whip one who ended up coming on board, Georgia Rep. Rich McCormick, who stopped to admire her newborn.
“Hey, we need to ask this guy to sign,” Pettersen said. McCormick said he was leaning toward supporting the effort.
“I think that’s a great cause. That’s not a partisan issue. I think that’s just good for people,” McCormick said.
Speaker Mike Johnson has been ardently opposed to the effort, saying he sympathized with young mothers in the House but claiming proxy voting is “unconstitutional.” Through a spokesperson, Johnson declined to comment Tuesday.
Republicans have, by and large, opposed proxy voting in theory since it was implemented by the Democrat-controlled House in the early days of COVID-19, allowing absent members to designate a colleague to vote on their behalf. Both parties used proxy voting in large numbers during the pandemic, prompting bipartisan complaints that the system was being abused.
Then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy led a legal challenge to stop the practice, but the Supreme Court opted in 2022 not to take up the case. Another Republican-led lawsuit argues that proxy voting violates the Constitution’s Quorum Clause. That case is ongoing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
The resolution introduced by Pettersen and supported by Luna specifically states that proxy votes don’t count toward establishing a quorum, an effort to appease Republican detractors, Luna said.
“It is in line with the Constitution. It provides a left and right limit. And frankly … the Republican Party is pro-family. I’m simply reminding them of that,” Luna said. “Not to mention we’re at the slimmest majority in U.S. history, so we need to be able to give access to parents to actually allow them to vote and spend time with their families as well.”
Now that the discharge petition has crossed the 218 threshold, supporters can move forward to the next stage. The rarely used tool allows rank-and-file members to force a vote on the floor, which could happen in the coming weeks after the House returns to Washington from its March break.
The narrow carve-out for parents was enough to sway one of those Republicans, Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett, who described himself as an “unrepentant mama’s boy.”
“I’m a supporter of mamas. I think that ought to be the exception. I think women and babies are beautiful, and I dig them,” Burchett said. “I support that, and I don’t support any other proxies.”
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