New Research by Mixon Examines Recent Proxy Voting Rule in U.S. House of Representatives

A new study by Turner College economics professor Frank Mixon and his colleague Benno Torgler of Queensland University of Technology (Australia) examines the use of proxy voting in the U.S. House of Representatives during 2021.  As the authors explain, on May 15, 2020, House Resolution 965, which authorized “remote voting by proxy in the U.S. House of Representatives and providing for remote committee proceedings during a public health emergency due to a novel coronavirus, and for other purposes,” passed a full vote in the U.S. House, 207 to 199.  In addition to proxy voting, HR 965 also authorized remote proceedings in committees, for Representatives to participate remotely during such proceedings and to be counted for purposes of establishing a quorum.  Mixon and Torgler point out that proxy voting has been heavily criticized by some media outlets and others as an excuse for engaging in non-legislative activities, or for reasons far beyond its intent, such as campaigning for re-election, engaging in political fundraising, attending to events and family matters beyond emergencies, enjoying holidays, doing interviews, or for simply personal or political convenience.  The study empirically examines, within the context of the academic literature on legislative shirking, the factors that influence the extent of proxy voting by members of the U.S. House of Representatives during 2021.

The results discussed in the study indicate that majority party Democratic Representatives tended to utilize proxy voting about 65 percent more than their Republican counterparts, likely as a link to the usual higher rates of absenteeism among legislators with greater influence over legislative outcomes.  The study, which appears in a recent special issue (on public choice topics) of Frontiers in Applied Mathematics and Statistics, also finds that longer-serving legislators tended to utilize proxy voting more often than their junior counterparts as they were able to use proxy voting with less of an expectation of punishment from voters given their greater name recognition an political clout.  Most importantly, Mixon and Torgler report that legislators who skipped votes during 2019 were also significantly more likely to utilize proxy voting in 2021.  More specifically, the study finds that a one percentage point increase in prior shirking (in 2019) by a legislator is associated with a 6.9 to 7.3 percent increase in the number of proxy votes cast on behalf of that legislator in 2021.  As Mixon and Torgler assert, this finding supports the idea that the proxy voting allowance produced by passage of HR 965 in 2020 was simply a new avenue for old-fashioned legislative shirking (i.e., vote skipping).  In this case, however, Representatives could provide evidence of recorded votes, which shields them to some degree from electoral (i.e., ballot box) retaliation by their voting constituents, who may otherwise be frustrated by the lack of legislative representation from their shirking legislators.