Showing up for votes at the Capitol continued to be a challenge for some members of Congress in 2024, with health issues and election-year absences driving the drop in attendance.
According to CQ Roll Call’s annual vote studies, the rate of House lawmakers casting votes was 94.7 percent in 2024, a drop from 96.9 percent in 2023 and from the record highs of 2021 and 2022, when the Democrat-led House gave members the option to cast proxy votes on colleagues’ behalf during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Among the House lawmakers facing health issues in 2024 was Arizona Democrat Raúl M. Grijalva, who was diagnosed with lung cancer and made only 12 percent of votes. Prior to winning a 12th term last fall, the Tucson-area congressman announced that he would not run for reelection in 2026. He also relinquished his position as top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee in December.
Pennsylvania Democrat Dwight Evans had a stroke in May, after which he missed every vote until the end of the year, dropping his vote participation rate to about 37 percent.
Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee made 43 percent of House votes before she died in July after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Her daughter, Erica Lee Carter, briefly took her Houston-based seat during the lame-duck session after winning a special election in November.
Another Texas congresswoman, Republican Kay Granger, who retired last year, made about 46 percent of the votes in 2024, with her last recorded vote coming on July 24. Her son told The Dallas Morning News in December that she was in a senior-living facility and dealing with “some dementia issues.”
North Carolina Republican Greg Murphy, who had surgery in May to remove a tumor in his skull, voted about 70 percent of the time last year. His previous lowest score since coming to Congress in a 2019 special election was 90 percent in 2020.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., voted around 61 percent of the time last year. But speakers have traditionally been selective on which votes to cast, resulting in their participation scores fluctuating annually. Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., had a vote participation score of about 51 percent during his abbreviated tenure. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., cast votes about 11 percent of the time during her second speakership stint, from 2019 to 2023.
Senate outliers
The Senate overall had a vote participation score of 94.5 percent in 2024 — its lowest since 2019. As with the House, a couple of outliers helped push the score down: senators running for other office or under indictment.
Republican JD Vance of Ohio, now the vice president, missed the most votes of any senator in 2024. The long stretches of campaigning as Donald Trump’s running mate saw Vance’s participation score drop to 60 percent. That’s still an improvement over former Vice President Kamala Harris, who, as a California senator, made it to 55 percent of votes during the 2020 election year amid the pandemic.
Former Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey missed the second-most votes of all senators, as he was in court for extended periods last year for a federal corruption trial. He was present for about 68 percent of votes until his resignation in July after being convicted. Menendez was sentenced last month to 11 years in prison.
Other senators who posted vote participation scores on the lower end of the spectrum included Republicans Mike Braun of Indiana (79 percent), who successfully campaigned for governor last year; and Marco Rubio of Florida (78 percent), who was chosen to be Trump’s secretary of State.
Checking out early
A number of now-retired members may have gotten a head start on leaving Congress and posted low vote participation scores even if they didn’t report any health issues or seek another office.
Former New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who lost his June Democratic primary, was in attendance for about 67 percent of votes last year. More than 100 of those missed votes occurred after he came up short in the primary against now-Rep. George Latimer.
Over a two-decade House career, North Carolina Republican Patrick T. McHenry’s participation score never dipped below 74 percent. But in his last year in Congress, he was more checked out, showing up for about 68 percent of votes.
Former West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin III, a Democrat who switched his party affiliation to independent last year, posted the lowest attendance score of his congressional career in 2024 — he was present for 73 percent of votes. His previous lowest participation score for a full year was 94 percent in 2022.
Hustle! Hustle!
At times during the year, both House and Senate lawmakers seemed to have been caught off-guard during a quick-moving vote series. These made the bulk of votes missed by most members in 2024.
Nearly 100 House lawmakers were absent for a procedural vote in June to kick off consideration of a spending package. The vote was gaveled short by Alabama Republican Mike D. Rogers as members tried to get to the floor on time.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah triggered a live quorum call in November as the Democrat-controlled Senate considered judicial nominations during President Joe Biden’s final days in office. The maneuver permits the sergeant-at-arms to request senators to appear in the chamber, which is the closest thing to upending their daily schedules.
One-third of eligible senators did not show up for the live quorum vote.
Perfect attendance
Despite 2024 being a presidential election year, with more rallies, fundraising events and campaigning to boot, seven senators and 13 House members who served for the full year managed to make 100 percent of their votes.
Maine Republican Susan Collins continued her long-running streak of perfect attendance in the Senate. The current chamber leaders, South Dakota Republican John Thune and New York Democrat Charles E. Schumer, also posted perfect participation scores; as did Democrats Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who lost a bid for a fourth term in November, and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, who has never voted below 99 percent in his career.
On the House side, Arkansas Republican Steve Womack has not missed a vote since he first came to Congress in 2011. Joining him with perfect participation last year were other routinely high-attendance lawmakers, including Tennessee Republican Chuck Fleischmann, Ohio Republican Bob Latta, North Carolina Democrat Deborah K. Ross and California Democrats Juan C. Vargas and Mike Levin.
Latta said voting attendance has been hardwired into him since he was about 7 years old: His father, the late Republican Rep. Delbert L. Latta, once drove with him and his sister through a blizzard in 1963 to make an infamous Christmas Eve vote. It was 500 miles from Ohio and back in each direction.
“I can still remember the snow dropping off the car in the Cannon parking garage,” the congressman recalled in an interview. “We got home at 2 o’clock Christmas morning.”
Looking ahead to 2025, Latta said he’s most worried about attendance affecting passage of the majority’s agenda given Republicans’ narrow margins in the chamber.
“We need every member there casting their vote … at least on our side,” said Latta, who also assists in the GOP’s whipping operation.
Efforts to reintroduce more limited forms of proxy voting — for instance, for new parents — have been unsuccessful, and Latta doesn’t see it coming back so long as Republicans control the House.
“If you have it for one thing, then it’s like, OK, well, then why don’t we do it for this and then the next?” he said. “And so it’s like, where’s your cutoff line?”
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