John Carter Election Denial Texas

The Bill to Repair the Capitol Passed by One Vote. John Carter Meant to Kill It — His Colleague Forgot to Cast His No.

H.R. 3237 paid for Capitol repairs, National Guard reimbursements and Capitol Police body cameras after January 6. It passed 213-212. Carter's office confirmed he would have voted no — and a tie would have sunk it.

MAGA Report Cards · Aug 10, 2026

On May 20, 2021, the House voted on a bill to pay for the damage done to the Capitol on January 6.

It passed 213 to 212.

One member of the House who was recorded as "Not Voting" that day was John Carter of Texas. He was not sick, and he had not decided to sit it out. He had handed his proxy to a colleague and told him how to vote. The colleague forgot to file it.

Carter's office confirmed afterward that he would have voted no.

A tie fails in the House. If that one vote had been submitted the way Carter wanted it submitted, the bill would have died 213–213.

What the bill actually paid for

H.R. 3237 was called the Emergency Security Supplemental to Respond to January 6th Appropriations Act. It was $1.9 billion, and Congress's own summary of it is not complicated. The money went to:

repairing the parts of the Capitol that the mob broke
the U.S. Capitol Police
reimbursing the National Guard for the cost of responding
a quick reaction force in the D.C. National Guard to back up the Capitol Police
body-worn cameras for Capitol Police officers who interact with the public
support for the prosecutions

Reasonable people can argue about a spending bill. But this is what Carter's vote was going to be against: fixing the broken doors, paying back the Guard troops who slept on the marble floor, and putting cameras on the officers who defended the building.

This wasn't a one-off

The uncast proxy is a story about a staffer's mistake. Carter's record is not.

He voted to reject the Electoral College results from Arizona and Pennsylvania — hours after the mob had been cleared out of the very building the $1.9 billion would go on to repair.

He voted against impeaching Donald Trump for inciting it.

Six weeks after the security funding vote, on June 30, 2021, he voted against even creating the House committee to investigate what happened.

So: don't count the electors, don't impeach the president, don't investigate the attack, and — but for a clerical error — don't pay to fix the building or reimburse the troops. That's four for four.

How the proxy failed

Proxy voting existed in 2021 because of COVID. A member who couldn't be in Washington could file a letter designating another member to cast their vote, and had to instruct that member in writing exactly how to vote.

Carter's proxy was held by Rep. Ken Calvert of California. Calvert's spokesperson gave a blunt explanation: "Rep. Calvert made a mistake and simply forgot to cast Rep. Carter's vote."

That is the whole reason the Capitol security bill left the House alive.

It is worth being precise about what this does and does not show. Carter did not sneak a vote. He did not lie about where he was — unlike Greg Steube, who told the House clerk a "public health emergency" kept him from voting while he was on stage at CPAC in Orlando. Carter's intent was on the record and his office confirmed it. The point is what the intent was.

A man who is often not in the room

Carter has been in Congress since 2003 — 23 years. Over that span, GovTrack's tally shows he has missed 806 of 15,135 roll call votes, or 5.3% — more than double the 2.0% median for representatives currently serving.

Some quarters are far worse than the average. In July through September of 2023 he missed 114 of 224 votes — more than half of everything the House voted on for three months, putting him in the 99th percentile of absences among his colleagues.

Missing a vote because you're ill is human. Missing a one-vote decision because nobody filed the paperwork is a different kind of failure — and it happened on the closest, most consequential vote of that year. When the margin is one, showing up is the job.

We have written about a farm bill that died in committee by one vote because a senator was at the markup but not in the room for the final tally. The pattern repeats because the incentives never change: the vote you skip is the one nobody can pin on you.

Carter is 84, has served 23 years, and is running again in Texas's 31st District — the district that contains Fort Hood. He chairs the Appropriations subcommittee that writes the military construction and veterans budget. The bill he meant to sink would have reimbursed National Guard troops for the cost of defending the Capitol.

We deserve better.