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House rejects second attempt to impeach Trump as Democrats vote ‘present’
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2025
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What does "voting 'present'" mean?
I'm guessing it is a bit like abstaining but with some sort of special meaning in the house?
I think it has to do with a bit of history that I'm going to recount very poorly from a book my father had that I tried to read called Congressional Anecdotes. The author of this book tried to sound smarter than he was by using complicated sentences, euphemisms and odd turns of phrase, so I eventually gave up, but I got a couple chapters in.
Apparently, in the early days of congress, the rule was you needed a quorum. You needed either most or all of congress to be there to hold a vote. So if a few congressmen didn't want a bill to pass, they'd just...not show up for the vote. Which essentially meant congress never achieved anything ever. This wasn't a law, it was a House rule. So at one point, the speaker was calling a vote, started to take a roll call, and when several members were apparently absent, he said "Well we'll just mark them down as abstaining in absentia then." and held the vote with the members present.