In America’s earlier days, congressional representation meant traveling long distances by horse and buggy (and not the nice ones with good suspension that you take for a romantic carriage ride, but the kind that bounce up and down and leave you feeling like you rode a badly serviced motorcycle across half the ruts and roads of the Pacific Northwest) through mud and storms to the unlivable half-built swamp that was D.C.
It wasn’t fun. And that was the point.
The men who did this were away from their families for long periods before there was Zoom, they had to exchange letters, the way John Adams and his wife did, they lived in sometimes surprisingly miserable conditions, running out of money to pay for lodging and food if their state legislatures back home didn’t apportion the funds (over various disputes) and they did it because they believed in something.
Congressional service has become a lot easier. D.C. weather has been ameliorated by air conditioning and heating. There are nice (and very expensive) Georgetown apartment buildings you can live in (while somehow paying the mortgage on your main home) or buy an actual house and enjoy commuting through D.C. traffic.
And now we come to remote voting. Yesterday’s publicity stunt and the Republican failure to end remote voting, a pandemic absurdity, is part of a bigger problem. Yes, if you’re a new parent, making it to the floor to vote is hard. But, frankly, it’s supposed to be hard. If you can’t make it to the floor to cast votes, the only way you’re coming to committee hearings is by Zoom.
Running the country is not supposed to be a part-time job.
Some jobs can be done remotely. And some jobs can be done remotely. Others can’t or shouldn’t be because they either involve a lot of in-person interaction or because they’re serious enough that they shouldn’t be.
Congress is one of those jobs. It’s not something you should be juggling like 60% of the office jobs out there which, frankly, don’t matter very much.
A district elects a member of Congress to represent them. It’s not just a job. It’s representative government. If you’re ‘juggling’ representing your district with other things and you can’t come to the floor to vote, you’re depriving your district of representation in the running of their lives and doing that thing which Democrats talk a lot about… you’re undermining ‘democracy’ or the fabric of representative government.
Circumstances may make it hard to do your job. And then you resign and do something else.
The Democrats who fought to allow remote voting for new parents are not doing this for the voters, they’re doing it for themselves.
