There is a kind of vote in Congress where the right answer is obvious to almost everybody, and the only thing it really measures is nerve.

On October 2, 2020, the House had one of those. It voted on a resolution condemning QAnon — the conspiracy theory claiming that famous Americans run a secret global child-trafficking ring, and that Donald Trump is fighting them.

It passed 371 to 18.

Then there was one more vote, all by itself in its own column: a single "present." That was Andy Harris of Maryland.

Out of 435 seats in the House of Representatives, exactly one member looked at a resolution condemning QAnon and decided that yes and no were both too much to ask.

What the resolution actually said

It helps to read it, because Harris's non-answer looks worse the more you know about what he was refusing to answer.

The full text of H.Res. 1154 laid out the case in detail. It quoted the FBI, which had assessed "with high confidence" that fringe political conspiracy theories including QAnon "very likely motivate some domestic extremists, wholly or in part, to engage in criminal or violent activity," and that they "very likely encourage the targeting of specific people, places and organizations."

It quoted the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which had concluded that QAnon "is arguably no longer simply a fringe conspiracy theory but an ideology that has demonstrated its capacity to radicalize to violence individuals at an alarming speed."

Then it listed what QAnon believers had already done, by 2020:

• A man arrested in 2018 for plotting to plant a bomb in the Illinois Capitol rotunda
• A man arrested in 2018 for using an armored car to block traffic on the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge
• A man in Arizona arrested in 2019 for vandalizing a Catholic church
• A woman in Colorado arrested in 2019 for plotting an armed raid to kidnap her own child
• A man charged with murdering a New York crime boss in 2019
• A woman arrested in New York with a car full of knives after threatening to kill Joe Biden

The resolution also noted that QAnon believers were flooding real anti-trafficking hotlines with false reports — actively harming the effort to rescue actual exploited children.

That is what Andy Harris would not condemn.

The usual excuse doesn't work here

Republicans looking for cover on this vote had an argument ready: the measure was one-sided, going after the right while ignoring violence on the left. Rep. Debbie Lesko of Arizona pushed an amendment to add language condemning antifa. It was voted down in the House Rules Committee.

But look at the resolution that actually reached the floor. Its second resolving clause condemns, in plain text, "all other groups and ideologies, from the far left to the far right, that contribute to the spread of unfounded conspiracy theories and that encourage Americans to destroy public and private property and attack law enforcement officers." A "whereas" clause hits the same note again.

The bill wasn't a Democratic hit job either. It was sponsored by Rep. Tom Malinowski, a New Jersey Democrat, and Rep. Denver Riggleman, a Virginia Republican, who told The Hill that conspiracy movements that "incite violence or violent threats and destroy faith and trust in our democratic institutions must be identified, condemned and exposed through facts."

Both parties wrote it. It condemned both extremes. And 146 Republicans voted for it.

"Present" is the coward's column

Give the 17 Republicans who voted no this much: they took a position. So did Justin Amash, the Michigan libertarian and former Republican who joined them. You can look at that list — Mo Brooks, Paul Gosar, Scott Perry, Steve King and the rest — and know exactly where each of them stood.

Harris did something different. "Present" is the vote you cast when you want the record to show nothing at all. He would not say QAnon was dangerous. He would not say it wasn't.

And he never explained it. When Maryland political writers went looking for a reason, there was no statement from Harris or his office — nothing.

That silence is a habit. When Harris voted against Congressional Gold Medals for the police officers who defended the Capitol a few months later, he turned down interview requests, had staff send a short statement to a handful of outlets, and then refused to give Maryland Matters a copy of it. One of his aides told the outlet to "Make that question 103" — a joke about a Maryland Matters piece titled "99 Questions for Rep. Andy Harris" that documented how rarely he talks to the press.

Three months later, he was the one repeating a theory

The QAnon vote was October 2, 2020. Here is what Harris did next.

On January 6, 2021, after a mob stormed the Capitol, Harris voted that same night to reject Arizona's electoral votes, and the next day voted to reject Pennsylvania's. Both objections failed badly — 121-303 and 138-282.

He also downplayed what had just happened, saying there was "no indication that this was a truly violent protest, as violent as one as you would worry about." Five people died in the attack on the building, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. Two other officers later died by suicide.

The next morning, on FOX45 Baltimore, he questioned whether the crowd of Trump supporters had been infiltrated by members of antifa or Black Lives Matter — floating an unproven claim about who was really responsible, three months after declining to condemn a movement built on unproven claims about who is really responsible.

He wouldn't condemn a conspiracy theory in October. He was repeating one in January.

He is not a backbencher anymore

In September 2024, Harris was elected chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, the hard-line conservative bloc he says he has belonged to "since its beginning." He is also Maryland's only Republican in Congress.

This is the same man who, given a plain yes-or-no question about a movement the FBI tied to domestic extremism, picked neither.

It is worth remembering that he had no trouble taking a hard stand four years earlier — when the question was whether to put Maya Angelou's name on a post office. He voted no on that one, and told a reporter exactly why. He can be decisive. He just saves it for poets.

Voters in Maryland's 1st District should ask him the question again, and keep asking until he answers it. It has been almost six years.

Sources

• House Roll Call 218 — H.Res. 1154, condemning QAnon, passed 371-18 with 1 present (Clerk of the House, Oct. 2, 2020)
• Full text of H.Res. 1154 as passed (Congress.gov)
• House approves measure condemning QAnon, but 17 Republicans vote against it (The Hill, Oct. 2, 2020)
• Harris Won't Condemn QAnon (Seventh State, Oct. 2020)

Photo: Official portrait of Rep. Andy Harris. U.S. House of Representatives, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.