Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., one of the filibuster’s greatest modern champions, is wrong on that front. She is right about something else, however: How the Senate conducts its votes is completely ludicrous. Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday that she lost her cool at Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., during one extended voting period:
“Could we have some discipline in the votes, ever?” an exasperated Sinema said to Schumer, audible from the press gallery seating. “You’re in charge!”
When Schumer later appeared to try and mollify her, Sinema said “Fine!” before leaving the chamber. It’s not the first time senators have complained about the chamber’s procedures, which include manually tallying votes rather than the House’s streamlined electronic voting.
Look, I hate to say this, but I’m Team Sinema here. The Senate process for voting takes forever, is deeply inefficient, and encourages most senators’ seeming addiction to being anywhere but the Senate floor. There’s no reason for this.
Most business in the Senate takes place via unanimous consent agreement, which just presumes everyone is cool with whatever action is happening. But when votes are taken these days, it’s most often done via roll call vote. The clerk calls out the name of all 100 senators at a pace that can only be described as glacial, confirming their votes once cast. That process takes even longer because at almost no point are all 100 senators even anywhere near the Senate’s chambers. Watch the Senate vote on C-Span 2 and you’ll often hear minuteslong stretches of silence, only occasionally punctured by a newly cast vote.
Watch the Senate vote and you’ll often hear minutes-long stretches of silence, only occasionally punctured by a newly cast vote.
Meanwhile the House’s electronic system, which it’s had since the 1970s, quickly collects the votes of its 435 members in mere minutes, allowing C-Span to display vote totals as votes roll in. Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., hinted back in 2013 that the Senate might finally move in a similar direction. It has not.
To allow for fewer members to be crowded together on the floor during the pandemic, the House also authorized voting by proxy in March 2020. House Republicans, who’ve generally been less respectful of Covid mitigation efforts than Democrats, initially rejected the measure and unsuccessfully appealed to the Supreme Court to intervene. The rule change is set to expire this month, but its popularity among members may result in it being made permanent.
Meanwhile, pandemic or no pandemic, senators still have to cast their votes in person. And if they aren’t able to, well, that’s one less vote counting toward the total needed for a majority. (Unless, infuriatingly, you’re trying to overcome a filibuster, which requires 60 votes, no matter how many people are actually in the chamber.) Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., even at the height of Covid’s spread, was particularly outspoken against the idea of proxy voting in the Senate.
We’re likely going to see the repercussions of that choice in the coming weeks. The Democrats’ control of the Senate has been hanging on by the thinnest of margins for over a year now, the longest evenly divided Senate in history. But now Republicans are set to have more members present and voting until the spring.
Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., who’s recovering from a stroke, will be unable to return to vote for four to six weeks, NBC News reported Wednesday. In a 50-50 Senate, that could mean there’s at least a month before Democrats take any tough votes likely to need the vice president’s tiebreaking vote. Lujan’s absence could even potentially affect President Joe Biden’s choice for Supreme Court justice, forcing him to find a candidate that at least one Republican senator would support.
Granted, there are times when it's strategic to hold votes open for extended periods of time. In 2013, the Senate needed five hours to allow Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., to fly back to Washington and overcome the GOP’s filibuster of President Barack Obama’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In 2019, a vote that began in the morning was held open until the evening to allow Democratic presidential candidates to travel back from a forum in Miami. In 2021, the Senate set a record for longest open vote, 11 hours and 50 minutes, as Democrats worked to secure the support of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., for unemployment benefits in the Covid relief bill.
But there’s no reason everyday votes should last hours, and Sinema is right that the body should impose some discipline on this front. Schumer could, for example, have the chair end votes after 30 minutes. But in the Senate, where every member sees themselves as a leader and not a follower, it’s not clear how well that would go over. But if the trade-off offer is allowing proxy voting in exchange for shorter votes? That could be the combination that actually get the sclerotic body moving at a pace befitting the year 2022.
