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| AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin |
According to a report, Democrats are panicking, fearful that the COVID-19 pandemic could prevent Nancy Pelosi from being re-elected as House speaker despite Democrats holding a majority in the chamber.
Is this really possible? Well, let’s see.
While House members can vote by proxy due to emergency rules adopted in May to protect members from getting and spreading COVID-19, but, as The Hill reports, “the proxy-voting rule expires with the new Congress, requiring lawmakers to be in the Capitol in person if they want to participate in the Jan. 3 floor vote for Speaker.”
New rules governing the 117th Congress happen after the vote for speaker.
House Democrats have been taking advantage of this proxy-voting rule in significant numbers. On December 18, nearly 90 Democrats voted by proxy.
This means that candidates for speaker of the House must receive a majority of the votes cast in person to be elected speaker. Democrats already have a thin majority of 222 seats following the 2020 election, and three moderate Democrats say they don’t intend to vote for Pelosi when the vote takes place on January 3. In addition, several Democrats have health conditions that have kept them from the Capitol in 2020. It would only take a small number of Democrats being exposed to COVID-19 prior to the vote for Pelosi to potentially be in trouble. --->READ MORE HERE
As Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) seeks the support to keep the gavel for another term, her allies are keeping close watch on a potential wild card that could complicate her path next month: COVID-19.
Pelosi is already facing a much slimmer majority in the next Congress, after Democrats were clobbered at the polls in November, meaning she can afford far fewer Democratic defections than the 15 who opposed her two years ago. And lawmakers must be present on the House floor to cast their vote for Speaker, precluding the option for members to vote remotely, as many have done throughout the pandemic.
The combination of factors creates the chance that Democrats could face a dilemma on Jan. 3 in which Pelosi locks up the Democratic support to remain Speaker, but coronavirus concerns — illnesses, quarantines or otherwise — prevent a sufficient number of them from being in the Capitol to log their votes.
A failure of Pelosi to secure support from half the voting members would, at the very least, throw the process into chaos. In the Democrats’ nightmare scenario, the math could tilt so far in the Republicans’ favor that it yields a GOP Speaker. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to related stories:
NERVOUS OVER NANCY Democrats worry Covid will cost Pelosi her job as speaker – and could hand Republicans top job in House
Democrats fear possibility that COVID-19 will cost Nancy Pelosi her job
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