Should congress refrain from business during the lame-duck-session?

[Sir Mohamed]

Should congress refrain from business during the lame-duck-session, including new members be sworn in after 30 days already instead of January 3? With refrain from business I mean not passing any laws of significance or confirm any nominees for the cabinet, courts, ambassadorships or attorneys. Only exceptions should be immediate relief in case of a natural disaster or so.

The question is not related to your partisan preferences, so any rule would apply to either side.

I personally voted No. Sometimes unpopular decisions needs to be made and important measures be enacted/unfinished business gotten done now that the election is over. Also, lawmakers are elected for 2 or 6 years and not 1.75 or 5.75 years. I don't see what's the benefit swearing in new members in December instead of January. I think it's better to start once the new year has arrived anyway.

[Antonio the Sixth]

There should be no lame-duck session, and the new Congress should be sworn-in immediately upon certification (which itself should be completed no later than one week after election day). This is how sane countries do it.

[Pericles]

Congress doesn't do enough work already.

[Ferguson97]

No. This would mean that Congress is literally not doing anything for nearly 2 months. That's stupid.

[Sir Mohamed]

No. This would mean that Congress is literally not doing anything for nearly 2 months. That's stupid.

Not necessarily, if the swearing-in date is moved. Theoretically newely (re)elected members could be inaugurated in December. Terms in the CA state legislature begin in early December already.

[Associate Justice PiT]

There should be no lame-duck session, and the new Congress should be sworn-in immediately upon certification (which itself should be completed no later than one week after election day). This is how sane countries do it.

     My wife's home country (which is larger than any individual state) counted the votes in a nationwide election earlier this year in two hours. It's ridiculous that some races take weeks to call here.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

There should be no lame-duck session, and the new Congress should be sworn-in immediately upon certification (which itself should be completed no later than one week after election day). This is how sane countries do it.

     My wife's home country (which is larger than any individual state) counted the votes in a nationwide election earlier this year in two hours. It's ridiculous that some races take weeks to call here.

Since it's hot button stuff here, do they require voter ID and do they have absentee voting?

[The Mikado]

The 20th Amendment wasn't aggressive enough in cutting back the lame duck, yes, but it's just worth pointing out that you're abutting against Christmas-New Years pretty hard and Congress would be gone anyway. I don't really have an issue with the new Congress showing up on Jan 3rd because it's just after the New Year so they don't show up and immediately leave session for the holidays. It'd probably be better if the new President started Jan 10th rather than Jan 20th, though.

People always say "when this system was invented people were still traveling in horse-drawn carriages etc" but no they weren't, these rules were written in 1933 by the 20th Amendment, and they were explicitly trying to fix the lame duck problem by moving Inauguration Day from March 4th to January 20th. It's just January 20th is still too late.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Wouldn't it make more sense to do what normal countries do and... not have a lame-duck session at all? Swear the new Congress in immediately on its election and set it to work.

[Associate Justice PiT]

There should be no lame-duck session, and the new Congress should be sworn-in immediately upon certification (which itself should be completed no later than one week after election day). This is how sane countries do it.

     My wife's home country (which is larger than any individual state) counted the votes in a nationwide election earlier this year in two hours. It's ridiculous that some races take weeks to call here.

Since it's hot button stuff here, do they require voter ID and do they have absentee voting?

     Yes and no respectively.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

As with so much else about America (the lax gun laws and broader culture of violence, the higher levels of religiosity than Western Europe, the Presidential system itself), the practice of lame-duck periods is a New World thing that seems bizarre because it's not usually seen in combination with being a longstanding developed, wealthy democracy. However, even in other New World countries, the process of actually counting the votes to begin with is not as ridiculously drawn-out and angst-riddled as it is here.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

There should be no lame-duck session, and the new Congress should be sworn-in immediately upon certification (which itself should be completed no later than one week after election day). This is how sane countries do it.

     My wife's home country (which is larger than any individual state) counted the votes in a nationwide election earlier this year in two hours. It's ridiculous that some races take weeks to call here.

Since it's hot button stuff here, do they require voter ID and do they have absentee voting?

     Yes and no respectively.

I suspected as much.  Now if only our country could be so efficient.  I would say the military should be able to vote absentee though.

[The Mikado]

Wouldn't it make more sense to do what normal countries do and... not have a lame-duck session at all? Swear the new Congress in immediately on its election and set it to work.

As Nathan gets at, America does what its comparable peer set of countries do: the other New World Presidential Democracies. Mexico has a lame duck, Peru does, Brazil does, etc.

[Antonio the Sixth]

There should be no lame-duck session, and the new Congress should be sworn-in immediately upon certification (which itself should be completed no later than one week after election day). This is how sane countries do it.

     My wife's home country (which is larger than any individual state) counted the votes in a nationwide election earlier this year in two hours. It's ridiculous that some races take weeks to call here.

Since it's hot button stuff here, do they require voter ID and do they have absentee voting?

     Yes and no respectively.

I suspected as much.  Now if only our country could be so efficient.  I would say the military should be able to vote absentee though.

What we do have, though, is one polling place per 100-200 people instead of one per several thousand, all fully staffed with election workers capable to hand-count their ballots by election night. You can talk about abolishing absentee voting when you have that.

And of course voter ID is totally fine... if it's automatically issued to every voter when they become eligible, as we do here.