Why can’t Congress just vote from home?

WASHINGTON — On Thursday afternoon, Rep. Jim Himes sat in his car in an unexpected traffic jam 10 miles outside Washington, D.C.

He was on his way to Capitol Hill to vote on the largest economic stimulus package in U.S. history, a $2.2 trillion bill intended to lift America from the health and economic crisis gripping the nation as the coronavirus continues its insidious spread.

Hopefully, you’ve heard by now that the House passed this critical bill on Friday afternoon and President Donald Trump promptly signed it into law.

This column is not about that.

This column is about why Himes, D-4, and Reps. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, John Larson, D-1, and Joe Courtney, D-2, more than 200 members of Congress had to drive or fly back to the

U.S. Capitol from districts all over the country while Americans are being told not to travel during the coronavirus outbreak.

This column is about the ultimate tele-work challenge for the ultimate workplace: remote voting for the U.S. Congress.

You might be thinking that in the age of Zoom, Slack, Skype, and Google Hangouts, when millions of Americans are literally doing all sorts of jobs from home, is it really necessary for members of Congress to physically travel to the U.S. Capitol to just — in the case of the vote on Friday — shout “aye” or “nay”? (Yes, that’s actually how the largest stimulus bill in U.S. history was passed by the House.)

At the moment, the answer is yes. And many members of Congress agree that’s problem.

Consider this: although the lawmakers used the House chamber’s upper galleries to spread out as much as possible, by having over 216 people in one room, they violated the current guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to cancel all gatherings of more than 10 people.

By traveling and gatherings, these lawmakers — many of whom are your grandparents age — exposed themselves and their families to the coronavirus.

Multiple House and Senate members already have confirmed cases of coronavirus or symptoms.

So, will members of Congress have to keep traveling to the Capitol to vote like this, as the coronavirus epidemic stretches on for at least weeks, maybe another month or more?

There’s not really a great alternative, according to a House committee that investigated the issue and produced a whole report on it Monday.

“Implementing remote voting would raise serious security, logistical, and constitutional challenges,” the House Rules Committee concluded.

“Although off-the-shelf products exist to allow a Member to videoconference their vote, for example, they have not been tested under the sort of pressure they would face from enemy states or other bad actors trying to force the system offline or prevent individual Members from accessing it,” the report said.

The report also raised concerns that legislation passed by a remote vote could be challenged in court as illegitimate because the Constitution contains references to the House meeting to conduct business in its chamber on Capitol Hill.

But there is support from many lawmakers for exploring the idea further.

Nearly 70 House Democrats, including Courtney and Jahana Hayes, D-5, signed a letter to the chair of the House Rules Committee Monday, asking him to approve a temporary change to House Rules to allow for remote voting during times of national emergency.

Himes said he agrees that Congress needs a “back up system” for these kind of situations, but one can’t be made “on the fly.”

The number two Democrat in the Senate, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, introduced a resolution last week to change Senate rules to allow for remote voting, without specifying the mechanism for how the votes would be done.

“It’s during times like this, when we have a pandemic affecting every corner of society and we are asking people to stay in their homes, that we should have the ability to convene the Senate and get our work done even if we can’t be in the Capitol,” Portman said.

Durbin quoted Bob Dylan: “the times they are a-changin.”

But not all members of Congress agree. Rep. John Larson, D-1, does not support the idea because in addition to concerns about foreign interference and cyber-attacks, “he believes in times of crisis it’s Congress’s duty to vote in the Capitol,” his spokesperson Mary Yatrousis said.