Republicans, divided over who to elect as House speaker, are pitching a plan to internalize the process to avoid chaos on the House floor.
The proposal drafted by Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania would ensure that Republicans won’t nominate a speaker on the House floor until the conference unites behind a single candidate.
GOP lawmakers will vote in a secret ballot in a conference meeting for several rounds until a candidate garners 217 votes, which is roughly the number needed to elect a speaker on the House floor.
Lawmakers are deciding between House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio. If neither lawmaker can reach the 217 threshold after five rounds of voting, new candidates can enter the race.
One round of votes would be by roll call, requiring members to openly declare their support for candidates who can persuade certain lawmakers over to their side.
“We’re gonna have a debate about how we’re going to structure ourselves in terms of carrying this out. We have rules on how we select a speaker we’re not going to diverge from — the default is the majority vote,” Mr. Roy told reporters Wednesday.
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“But I think we are gonna have a serious conversation about how we ensure that we have 218 behind that individual before the floor and that’s what we’re going to debate,” he said.
Under current rules, each party nominates a speaker by a majority vote of their own conference or caucus. The winning candidate must win a majority of all House votes — both Democrats and Republicans — or roughly 218 votes when all 435 members are voting.
There are currently two vacant seats in the House.
The plan pitched by Mr. Roy and Mr. Fitzpatrick would spare the GOP a chaotic and public floor fight.
Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a supporter of Mr. Jordan, questioned how exactly the rule could be implemented.
“I want to know how you implement that. Right now, we have a secret ballot. And if you have a secret ballot and it turns out somebody’s only got 200 votes, how do you know who the other 18 are?” he asked. “Presumably, you’d have to have some mechanism for having a roll call … in conference and that would be unprecedented.”
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Rep. Claudia Tenney, a supporter of Mr. Scalise, took issue with the proposal. She said the process should remain transparent.
“When we make laws, we have to be predictable, stable and transparent about these things. To change the rule just for a unique situation, only to change it back as has been proposed concerns me a little bit,” she said. “We have to allow members to have that process.”
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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