GOP lawmakers vote remotely more often after initial scorn

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 50 Republicans who once joined a lawsuit claiming the House's pandemic-era proxy voting was unconstitutional have themselves voted by proxy this year, remotely without showing up.

Across the aisle, Rep. Kai Kahele, a Hawaiian Airlines pilot as well as a Hawaii congressman, has used proxy votes on all but five of this year’s 125 roll calls. Three of his Democratic colleagues have used the proxy procedure for every vote.

They’re among 303 lawmakers of both parties — more than two-thirds of the House — who have cast votes by proxy at least once this year, according to an Associated Press look at records that reflect how partisan divisions over voting from somewhere else have moderated.

The AP numbers show that overall, 191 Democrats, nearly 9-in-10, and 112 Republicans, just over half, have used proxy votes this year, cast by colleagues present in the chamber. While Democrats had previously used proxies heavily, just a handful of Republicans did so in 2020, the year the procedure began.

Of the House Republicans who've voted remotely this year, 54 had also signed onto a 2020 lawsuit that asserted it was “simply impossible” to ignore the Constitution’s requirement that lawmakers vote in person.

Congress "has never before flinched from its constitutional duty to assemble at the Nation’s Capital and conduct the people’s business in times of national peril and crisis," the GOP filing stated, citing the War of 1812 torching of the Capitol, the Civil War, the 1918 Spanish flu and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “So it was for more than two centuries. Until now."

The Supreme Court refused to hear the case in January without comment after it was dismissed by lower courts.

That litigation was brought by 160 House Republicans led by Minority Leader...