(CNN) Many rank-and-file House Democrats are growing restless with their leadership, hoping that Speaker Nancy Pelosi will soon embrace a decision to allow remote voting in the chamber as lawmakers clamor to legislate amid the coronavirus pandemic.
"We ought to have those procedures in place now, and we ought to have them in place permanently because this is not the last crisis that will test the continuity of Congress," said Rep. Tom Malinowski, a freshman Democrat from New Jersey.
House Rules Chairman Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and House Administration Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren of California, both Democrats, are expected to provide an update on their work on the House's options for remote voting during a Democratic caucus call Thursday, but no final decisions are expected to be made, sources say.
With lawmakers stuck at home for weeks now with no guarantee of when they'll return to Washington, many wish that leadership would have established a protocol for voting remotely weeks -- if not years -- ago. The rollout of the $2.2 trillion stimulus package has only exacerbated those calls as lawmakers race to deal with a crushing volume of phone calls, complaints and urgent pleas for help from constituents navigating the Small Business Administration's loan programs, unemployment insurance and stimulus checks.
On Wednesday, the Small Business Administration announced it would run out of money for the loan program for small business owners affected by coronavirus. With no apparatus to allow remote voting, congressional leaders are relying on unanimous consent agreements to pass legislation that would increase the program's funding, something that has been increasingly difficult to get as lawmakers remain divided on whether programs should be bolstered without structural fixes -- and Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie has vowed to object to any voice vote.
"There is some sense that we cannot continue operating under circumstances," said Rep. David Cicilline, a Democrat from Rhode Island. "The longer this pandemic proceeds, it is going to become more and more difficult."
Freshman Rep. Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, said he supports having a mechanism to vote remotely. Phillips said he believed there was a disconnect between veteran lawmakers and the new class over remote voting -- even though it's the older generation that's most at risk by being in close quarters during the pandemic.
"We're a 19th-Century institution operating like a 19th-Century institution in a 21st-Century world," Phillips said.
Rep. Andy Levin, a Democratic freshman from Michigan, said he also saw a generational divide when it came to the notion of voting remotely. He acknowledged there were concerns not just about upholding the traditions of the House, but also security issues that come with voting remotely.
"There's a lot of discussion internally about whether we're going to modernize processes," Levin said. "People worry about security, worry about voting being secured, actual voting of members on bills. But ... this pandemic is really calling everything into question, and certainly the processes of the House."
Pelosi has resisted calls thus far for a move to remote voting. In the Senate, where the average age of members is even older, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has also maintained his opposition to voting remotely.
On a conference call with reporters last week, Pelosi said that Democrats were examining remote voting, but she expressed concerns about security issues that would accompany such a change.
"We don't want anybody coming back at any time that might not be healthy for them, but we are right now concerned about the health of the American people," the California Democrat said. "The rules are what they are. Now if the rules need to be changed, that had to be done carefully."
Pelosi said House Democrats were also looking at proxy voting. Either option would require the House to change the rules.
Still, there are some signs that leadership is looking seriously at it. While remote voting could fundamentally change a Congress that has traditionally relied on in-person negotiations for breakthroughs, coronavirus is forcing the entire country to adapt.
"A lot of people think that it is time for that and maybe it is," House Democratic Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. But he cautioned that nothing would be decided without "a good study."
"I don't want to be willy-nilly about this," Clyburn said.
In a call with reporters Wednesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer warned there were significant technical and logistical hurdles to allowing remote voting. And while the Maryland Democrat said none of the leadership on the Republican or Democratic side thought it ought to be used regularly, he did caution that in an emergency situation, "we ought to have an alternative."
"Obviously that alternative would have to be voted on by the House to be adopted," he added. "It's being worked on very hard."
One option Hoyer said he had floated was using FaceTime for remote voting, but he warned, "There really is no substitute for coming together, sitting together, debating and talking to one another to effectively exercise our democratic responsibilities in the Congress of the United States."
The issue of remote voting challenges the House's long-standing traditions, rules and protocols. And there are some concerns that it could raise constitutional issues if a law were passed using remote voting and then later challenged in court.
The House Rules Committee released a report last month examining potential voting options during a pandemic. It acknowledged the desire for remote voting but said that implementing it would "raise serious security, logistical, and constitutional challenges."
The report also examined other options for voting during the pandemic, including pairing votes so members can be recorded, changing the number of members required for a quorum and changes to the rules like proxy voting or increasing the number of members required to object to a unanimous consent request.
Beyond voting, there's a desire among members and committee chairs to resume hearings remotely, too.
House leadership recently sent guidance to committee chairs on holding remote hearings, which said that the rules of the House do not allow for virtual hearings because a physical "presence" is required.
Committees can hear from witnesses by holding events such as briefings, panel discussions or roundtables instead of formal hearings, the guidance said. But there's no guarantee witnesses could be compelled to attend such events.
Last week, the House Problem Solvers Caucus sent a letter to Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, urging them to develop a system for legislating in emergency situations. The letter included a number of options for remote voting, including phoning the House clerk, using videoconferencing or setting up voting machines in district offices or homes.
"Unlike the flu pandemic of 1918, modern technology offers us a host of options to govern from afar, safely and securely, during these exigent circumstances," wrote the caucus leaders, Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and GOP Rep. Tom Reed of New York. "Governments around the world, including England and Japan, have deployed these options, and are voting from home."