Congress grapples with plans to work remotely, as state legislatures make it work

As many American businesses settle into the new normal of operating away from the office, Congress has been slow to adopt any measures to provide for remote work amid a global pandemic that has already infected more than one million citizens and six representatives.

Lawmakers have voted four times on various Covid-19 relief legislation, and they are likely to consider many more. It is inherently difficult to practice any social distancing in either chamber to cast votes, let alone to keep six feet from one’s nearest colleague.

“There’s some widespread understanding at this point in time that some sort of remote procedure will need to be adopted because we’re not looking at one or two more bills,” said Joshua Huder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute. “We’re looking at probably three or four or five, maybe six more coronavirus related bills. It’s just not feasible for immunocompromised or elderly members of Congress to be traveling in airplanes that frequently.”

The House of Representatives was set to consider a rule change to allow for proxy voting last week, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi instead established a bipartisan Virtual Congress Task Force to study the issue. Republicans argued against the rule change mainly because of the possibility that Democrats could jam legislation through with little meaningful debate, as well as upending hundreds of years of precedent. Congress doesn’t like changing how it operates.

“One of the barriers to implementing technology is that oftentimes technological advancements is, by definition, disruptive to the normal routines and traditions they are used to,” said Frederick Hill, a managing director at FTI Consulting who has 17 years of experience in both chambers. “The existence of old habits and familiarity with doing things a certain way become an impediment.”

The task force has convened twice so far. More than thirty lawmakers met virtually on Wednesday in what Majority Leader Steny Hoyer called an “example of how effective remote work in the House can be.”

Hoyer has been a supporter of remote work since nearly the start of the pandemic. In an April 21 letter, he urged the Chairs of the Committee on House Administration and the Committee on Rules Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., to consider remote voting and committee work, arguing that video conferencing software enables people to see who is speaking, leaving as little doubt about who votes aye or nay on the floor.

“Such action is performed in public and is public record, the issue of security appears to be minimal,” he wrote. “While any distance-voting is less optimal than in-person voting or debating in committee or on the Floor of the House, the sound and image of the Member doing so virtually is far superior to the utilization of proxies.”

In an op-ed for the Washington Post published Wednesday, McGovern also argued that the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 crisis warrants a change in how the House conducts business, a significant voice in favor as a gatekeeper for House procedure.

“We cannot let the way things have been done in the past, though, blind us to the way things should be done in the future,” he wrote. “The status quo has become unacceptable and dangerous — not just to members of Congress, but more importantly, to everyone we come in contact with.”

In a contrast to this debate over a remote Congress among American lawmakers, other democracies have already taken steps to vote and work virtually.

In the United Kingdom, members of Parliament voted on April 21 to debate legislation through “hybrid proceedings” during the pandemic. Of the 650 elected members, 50 can physically be in the chamber, while 120 can participate virtually.

“There aren’t many continuous governmental bodies,” Hill said when referring to the British Parliament. “Congress has a couple of hundred years of tradition and the British Parliament has traditions to go back beyond that. A lawmaking body can still have deep traditions and can still adopt new technology without having to change the character in a radical way of how it has conducted its business.”

The European Parliament has also moved much of its business online, casting votes through online ballots sent through official email.

“European Parliament must remain open, because a virus cannot bring down democracy,” said president David Sassoli in a statement. The body’s remote voting procedure was first used on March 26, and it may be used until July 31.

Brazil’s Federal Senate even released detailed guidelines for its members about how the remote process works, and made it publicly available online for other countries to use.

“We need to start looking at some other countries that are enabling their legislators to work in the middle of a pandemic,” Huder said. “Any possible alternatives out there should be welcomed and should be at least considered.”

State legislatures are even testing out remote voting while Congress stalls the issue.

Pennsylvania’s State Senate and House approved rule changes in March to allow members to vote outside the state Capitol through video chat. It’s an optional safety measure, but at least 114 of the 203 lawmakers in the Pennsylvania House opted to use the electronic system to send four pieces of coronavirus-related legislation to the governor’s desk on March 25.

The New Jersey General Assembly held its first remote vote at the end of March and legislatures in North Carolina and Utah began holding virtual meetings on Tuesday.

Lorelei Kelly, the Director of Congressional Modernization at Georgetown University’s Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, wrote in a November 2019 article for The Hill about how modernizing congress is an issue of national security, specifically theorizing about how a pandemic could easily halt operations. She was part of a roundtable Thursday with the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations about remote voting during this crisis.

“We can look to states for models of progress,” Kelly said in her testimony. “Several state legislatures have moved on ahead with remote capacity. I can tell you that states are more than the laboratories of democracy. Today they are major spaces for modern civics.”