Born of a Crisis, Remote Voting in Congress Has Become a Useful Perk

An emergency measure intended to allow Congress to function amid a nationwide lockdown has become a matter of personal and political convenience for House members of both parties.

WASHINGTON — When the House revamped its rules in the early days of the pandemic to allow lawmakers to vote remotely, Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina was among 161 Republicans who sued to block the arrangement, arguing that it “subverts” the Constitution. But those objections were a distant memory by late June, when Mr. Norman and several other Republicans skipped town during a legislative workweek to rally at the southwestern border with Donald J. Trump. While they glad-handed with the former president, the lawmakers certified on official letterhead that they were “unable to physically attend proceedings in the House chamber” because of the coronavirus and designated colleagues in Washington to cast proxy votes in their places. The arrangement might have attracted more notice had it not become so widespread since the House adopted rules last spring to allow members, for the first time, to cast votes without being physically present in the chamber. Once billed as a temporary crisis measure to keep Congress running and lawmakers protected as a deadly pandemic ripped across the country, the proxy voting system has become a tool of personal and political convenience for many House members.