GOP Proxy Voting Deal Is Likely Unworkable in Divided US House

A deal between House Speaker Mike Johnson and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna to head off Luna’s drive to establish proxy voting for new parents is unlikely to result in absent lawmakers influencing floor votes.

By backing down on the proxy voting push, Luna (R-Fla.) handed a win to the speaker. But Luna’s consolation prize — a return to congressional “vote pairing” — likely won’t serve as a real-life substitute for new mothers getting to vote remotely.

Vote pairing is an old-fashioned system allowed under House rules where two members on opposite sides of legislation “pair” up, and if one is absent, the other agrees to withhold their vote. Both members’ positions are reflected in the congressional record, but neither of their votes actually counts toward the total.

Johnson (R-La.) would not need Democrats on board to amend the House rules to formalize vote pairing, as long as he gets his narrow GOP majority in line behind it. But actually practicing it would require cooperation from Democrats, which is unlikely in an increasingly partisan political body where a single vote often determines a bill’s fate.

House Democrats met the Luna-Johnson agreement with confusion and a reluctance to accept the terms, after they previously signed on to a discharge petition allowing new parents to vote by proxy for 12 weeks.

The top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), criticized GOP leaders for adopting the vote pairing change as part of an unrelated procedural vote, instead of putting it on the floor by itself so members could freely debate it.

Vote pairing “basically is a glorified way to say that your vote doesn’t count,” McGovern said in an interview, calling the Luna-Johnson deal “a big nothing burger.”

Luna said part of her motivation to cut the deal with Johnson was to “protect the discharge petition process,” because some Republican hardliners “would not, under any circumstances, allow the discharge petition to come to the floor.”

“This is a step forward in the right direction,” Luna said of vote pairing, noting that she still supports full proxy voting rights for new mothers.

Luna previously was committed to triggering her discharge petition, which had broad Democratic support and a dozen GOP signatories. That caused Johnson to shut down the House floor early last week, because he opposes proxy voting in all forms on constitutional grounds.

Lawmaker Pressure

One House Democrat who signed Luna’s discharge petition said vote-pairing fails to achieve the chief aim of maintaining constituents’ representation if their representative is on parental leave. “Instead of bringing the voices of their constituents to the House Floor, this ‘fix’ effectively disenfranchises an additional district’s constituents,” the member said in a text to Bloomberg Government, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the issue candidly.

Others noted there would be pressure on lawmakers from either side of the aisle to break the pairing agreement, especially if their vote could be the difference between success and failure for President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Vote pairing has largely become a relic in the House and Senate, with just a couple recent instances. In 2018, Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Steve Daines (Mont.) paired up to cancel out their conflicting votes on Brett Kavanaugh’s US Supreme Court nomination so Daines could attend his daughter’s wedding.

Luna said in an X post Sunday that she and Johnson decided on pairing “for the entire conference to use when unable to physically be present to vote: new parents, bereaved, emergencies.” Johnson also committed to making the Capitol more friendly to new mothers, including by placing a breastfeeding room closer to the House floor, according to a congressional aide.

Many Democrats see vote pairing guidelines as no substitute for parental leave in the House. There’s also frustration on the left that Luna cut a deal with Johnson after Democrats stood by Luna’s bipartisan push to allow parental proxy voting.

The lead Democrat on the proxy voting push, Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.), praised Luna’s efforts to make the House more welcoming to new parents but criticized the speaker for going to “historic lengths” to kill the discharge petition. The Luna-Johnson deal “does not address the barriers we’ve fought so hard to overcome,” Pettersen said in a statement.

The proxy voting saga, which stirred Democratic anger at GOP leadership, will do nothing to quell the partisan furor that makes successful vote pairing so unlikely.

“What is the Republican problem with allowing expected mothers or new mothers to vote on behalf of their constituents?” Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) asked Monday. “This seems like a very strange hill for them to die on.”