Speaker Mike Johnson and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna reach proxy voting agreement
WASHINGTON - Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said on Sunday that she reached an agreement with House Speaker Mike Johnson over her push to allow new parents to vote by proxy, after a standoff between the two Republicans that left the House paralyzed for a week.
Johnson abruptly halted all House work last week after he failed to quash Luna’s effort to allow House members to vote remotely for up to 12 weeks if they or their spouse had just given birth. The procedure, known as proxy voting, lets House members designate another member to vote on their behalf - and it gained support from President Donald Trump.
But Luna wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that she and Johnson instead are moving to formalize a procedure known as “live/dead pairing — dating back to the 1800s — for the entire conference to use when unable to physically be present to vote: new parents, bereaved, emergencies.”
Vote pairing is a process in which a lawmaker who is absent on the floor forms a pair with a member who is present and is of the opposite stance on a vote. The member who is present abstains from voting yes or no, thus the absent member’s vote is canceled out.
The practice was used in 2018 during the first Trump term, when the Senate voted on the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court as an associate justice. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., who supported Kavanaugh, had to miss the vote for his daughter’s wedding. He ended up pairing with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska., who voted present rather than no.
“Thanks to POTUS and his support of new moms being able to vote when recovering from child brith (sic) as well as those who worked hard to get these changes done. If we truly want a pro-family Congress, these are the changes that need to happen,” Luna wrote.
But Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., who spearheaded the proxy voting effort with Luna, Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo., and Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., opposed the new agreement.
“From the very beginning, our shared goal has been to support new parents so they can do their jobs and vote on behalf of their constituents while also taking care of themselves and their families. Unfortunately, this ‘deal’ falls short of that goal – silencing new parents and perpetuating the status quo and the notion that Congress is ineffective and obsolete," Jacobs told Paste BN in a statement on Monday.
"I won’t accept the way Congress has always done things, and the American people won’t either. We will keep pushing for innovative ways to support young people and parents in Congress – including by modernizing how we vote – even if it takes a Democratic majority to do so," she added.
The agreement allows Republicans to break the gridlock that the House faced last week and vote on upcoming legislation.
Johnson wrote on X last week that he was "actively working on every possible accommodation to make Congressional service simpler for young mothers."