Those of us who want to #ExpandTheHouse, whether we realize it or not, are advocates for geographically distributed, remote access assembly of the Members for deliberation and voting. So we want to take notice of those who say such things cannot be done. https://www.legbranch.org/in-congress-assembled-a-virtual-congress-creates-more-problems-than-it-solves/

It is useful to see pointers to the Constitutional language that may stand in the way. A requirement of co-location of the two chambers. Language about the need to "assemble".

We've stretched Constitutional terms to the point of torture before, but it would indeed be tidier to amend, though a bigger hurdle.

I think there's reason to think the Framers would be ok with virtual assembly and remote voting. The First Article of Amendment approved by the 1st Congress set an expectation of representation. Clearly they thought a representation ratio of about 50K was appropriate.

It's not clear whether they had any capacity to imagine the USA as a nation with population of 330 million. That would be nearly half the population of the globe in their time.

But if an effective representative can only represent 50K people, the math is compelling. You need more the 6000 House members to get the job done. Surely they would see the need for creative thinking on how to "assemble" such a body.

The ability to interact meaningfully with people anywhere in the world in real time is with us. That concept was foreign to the framers in even pre-telegraph days, but they could have imagined it.

Many of the objections in the piece strike me as silly. The leading obstacle is remote assembly cannot happen because it is against House and Senate rules.

Surely the Constitution give both House and Senate complete control over their own rules of operation in anticipation that the wisdom of each time and circumstance has to be weighed. These rules can change.

The piece then tries to argue that legitimacy of the body would be undermined. This is puzzling, but reading on the authors are concerned about reduced capacity for rich deliberation, and reduced effectiveness of representation, where leadership drives everything.

The snarky response to the complaint is to ask "Do you see how the House operates now?"

You cannot lose what you do not have.

That said, as a conservative I should not be arguing that "it cannot get any worse".

My sense is the increase in effective representation coming from representing 15 times fewer people and doing so while still living right in their midst more than outweighs and loss the authors predict.

I also think they greatly underestimate the modern capability for rich interaction in productive endeavors. Done right, the remote members are not peons waiting to bark when the leadership has crafted the language in Washington.

They would be full participants in all parts of the lawmaking process, because they would demand it, because... Tada! They have voting power in the body which is the coin of that realm.

One concern in the piece was so ridiculous it made me laugh. We cannot accept remote voting because ....

'...a party leader ... leaning on a member: “If you don’t vote remotely with us today, then I can’t promise I’ll have the time to raise money for you this cycle.” '

Remove "remotely" and is there any reason to think exactly that exchange doesn't happen right now?

There are difficulties to be addressed making a change like this, but continued operation of normal, smelly, logrolling politics is emphatically not one of them.

Since the immediate worry is about infection, the piece goes on to observe there are no safe locations to hide. That gets the standard entirely wrong.

The benefit is not to achieve a result of zero lawmakers infected. It is to achieve a result of a high likelihood of at least a quorum of lawmakers uninfected. Diversity of location makes that happen.

The rest of the piece asserts that continued physical assembly is a demand we can reasonably place on lawmakers in light of pandemic risk. That's not really the issue that prompts my interest, so I'll leave it at that.