proxy voting

There were a few issues with the c.2020 implementation of "proxy voting" for House members.

💭 Historically, for the Senate, there was a courtesy of "giving live pair", where a member opposed to a bill would decline to vote, to balance an absent member in support of the bill.

🔥 none of the Founding Fathers ever owned a telephone, or even used a telegraph.

There are issues with the unlimited use of proxy voting.

But, a limited form would be more feasible.

In particular, it should be optimized for cases other than a closely-divided House where every vote counts.

The initial idea was that remote voting would be permitted only from the State Capitol building of each state.

This has a few advantages:

• a secure location
• re-enforces the existence of a State Capitol
• helps representatives to be close to their district

Beyond that: there are distinctions between procedural votes, and substantive votes on legislation. 💡 ( even "substantive" is too broad a term; amendments are considered substantive, yet are meaningless unless-and-until the underlying bill passes)

The first set of votes are often "contingent"; the nature of later votes are dependent on them. The infamous filibuster results from a failure to pass a procedural vote allowing for a substantive vote.

Yet: it is no great injustice if there are errors in procedure. Perhaps a minor injustice, but not a great one.

The impact of substantive votes is much larger; and these are generally not contingent on each other. It is possible to construct convoluted scenarios where one is dependent on another.

💡 But, a certain amount of a "multi-track" parliamentary process would be necessary to benefit from this distinction. And, unfortunately, a control-bloc of both parties is committed to the ability to kill bills procedurally that would otherwise pass.