Number of House members voting by proxy now at 71

The number of House members who will vote remotely as a result of the chamber’s recently passed legislation allowing them to cast proxy votes during the coronavirus pandemic reached 71 as of Thursday morning. 

The members are voting amid a lawsuit filed earlier this week by 20 House Republicans challenging the constitutionality of the bill.

On Wednesday, the House voted on and passed its first bill via proxy — a Senate measure to sanction Chinese officials cited for human rights violations against the country's minority Uighur population.

The Democrat-controlled chamber voted May 15, along party lines, to allow proxy voting during the coronavirus pandemic and perhaps a future public health emergency. A tally of those voting by proxy is kept on the Clerk of the House website.

Democrats drafted and passed the legislation out of such concerns as hundreds of members and staffers returning to cramped Capitol Hill offices, especially as the virus remains active in the District of Columbia and a large number of members, many of them older, must travel by commercial planes to get to Washington.

Congressional Republicans also argue the change sends the wrong message to other Americans who must work during the pandemic.