Mace missed another vote yesterday. The only House members skipping more are on medical leave.
The U.S. House came back on Monday, August 31, 2026 from its five-week August recess, and Rep. Nancy Mace missed both of the first two roll-call votes, one of 42 members absent. It fits a documented pattern: Mace has missed 36.1% of all 2026 votes through August, more than one in three, against a House median near one in fifty. The only two sitting members who have missed a larger share of 2026's votes, Thomas Kean Jr. and Frederica Wilson, were both on disclosed medical leave. Mace has given no public reason for her absences.
Maceopedia ·
When the U.S. House gaveled back in on Monday, August 31, 2026 after a five-week August recess, it took two roll-call votes. Rep. Nancy Mace missed both of them.
The House Clerk's own record shows Mace recorded as "Not Voting" on Roll Call 284 (S. 307, the Prison Staff Safety Enhancement Act) and Roll Call 285 (S. 32, the Local Access to Courts Act). She was not alone: 46 members missed the first vote and 42 missed the second, a bipartisan group that congressional reporter Jamie Dupree flagged as 21 Republicans and 21 Democrats. The single longest active absence streak in the House belongs to Rep. Frederica Wilson, who has missed 36 votes in a row.
For most members on that list, missing the first evening votes after a long recess is an unremarkable, one-off travel story. For Mace, it lands on top of a record that is anything but.
Mace's 2026 attendance record, drawn from the House Clerk roll-call data and GovTrack. Public reason given for the absences: none.
More than one vote in three, all year
Through the end of August, Mace has missed 103 of the 285 roll-call votes the House has held in 2026. That is 36.1%, more than one vote in three. GovTrack puts the lifetime median for representatives currently serving at about 2.1%, roughly one vote in fifty. Her own career average, dragged up by this year, is 6.3%.
The 2026 breakdown, quarter by quarter, shows how lopsided it is.
Her 2026 missed-vote rate by quarter. The dashed line is the House-wide median. Source: GovTrack and the U.S. House Clerk.
In the second quarter of 2026, the run-up to South Carolina's June 9 primary, Mace missed 59.2% of all votes, 74 of 125. GovTrack ranks that in the 99th percentile: her worst quarter in six years in Congress. After she lost that primary, her attendance did not snap back. She missed 28.8% of votes in July and August, a stretch that includes the two she missed yesterday.
Four years near the median, then a collapse
This is not how Mace's career started. For her first four-plus years in the House she was a reliable vote, missing almost nothing, and for long stretches better than the typical member.
Missed votes by quarter, 2021 to 2026. Her attendance held near the median until she launched a run for governor in August 2025. Source: GovTrack.
Her record held near the 2.1% median from January 2021 through the middle of 2025. The one earlier exception is a spike in the third quarter of 2023, when she missed 16.5% of votes; that stretch has no publicly reported explanation on the record.
The sustained break comes later, and it tracks her campaign calendar. Mace announced a run for governor of South Carolina at The Citadel on August 4, 2025. Her missed-vote rate climbed from there: 10.0% in the last quarter of 2025, 13.0% in the first quarter of 2026, then the 59.2% peak heading into the June 9 primary. She finished fifth of five, with about 12% of the vote. She did not file for re-election to her House seat, and has said she will return to the private sector when her term ends in January 2027.
The only members skipping more are on medical leave
Plenty of members miss votes. What sets Mace apart is that the House members ahead of her on the 2026 absence list are there for documented health reasons, and she is not.
Share of 2026 votes missed. The two members above Mace were both on disclosed medical leave. Source: GovTrack member records and public reporting.
Only two sitting House members have missed a larger share of 2026's votes than Mace. Rep. Thomas Kean Jr. (R-NJ) missed 50.5%; he disclosed he was on medical leave for depression, and has since returned to a near-perfect voting record. Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) missed 46.7% after confirming she had eye surgery, and announced her retirement in May at age 83.
Rep. Thomas Kean Jr. missed more of 2026's votes than Mace, and told the public why.
Rep. Frederica Wilson missed more than Mace after confirmed eye surgery, and is leaving Congress.
Below Mace, the pattern holds the other way. Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) hit a 59% quarter of his own while running for Senate, but his attendance snapped back to normal once that race ended, leaving him at 25.3% for the year. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), the cleanest comparison to Mace's situation, also lost his 2026 primary, yet kept showing up: his rate is 13.3% and falling. Among House members with no medical reason on the record, none has missed more of 2026's votes than Nancy Mace.
No reason on the record
Mace has offered no public explanation for missing yesterday's votes, and none for the broader pattern. Maceopedia found no statement from her or her office, and no news report, tying the absences to any medical, family, or other cause.
What is on the record is context. A Bloomberg Government analysis in the summer, "Departing House Republicans Are Skipping Votes at Brisk Pace," reported that House Republicans who lost primaries or sought other office have averaged about 60 missed votes this Congress, against a House-wide average of 18, and said Mace herself had "missed 105 votes, including a full three weeks of absences after losing her election." Former Rep. Daniel Lipinski, quoted in the same piece, put it bluntly: "there's little these trounced members can lose by ghosting their chamber."
On the night she lost the primary, Mace struck a different note. She told PBS NewsHour that "my time is up at the end of this year," that she had "no plans to run for Congress again," and pledged to finish her term "exactly the way I started... helping my constituents and those in need." Her 1st District constituents were among the roughly 730,000 South Carolinians whose seat cast no vote on either bill Monday night.
Related on Maceopedia:
- The legislation hub, the bills the House has taken up this Congress.
- The full timeline, the running record of Mace's public life.
- All dispatches, the complete catalog.
Sources and related coverage
- U.S. House Clerk (primary): Roll Call 284 and Roll Call 285, August 31, 2026, the official records showing Mace "Not Voting" on both. Full 2026 index: clerk.house.gov/evs/2026.
- GovTrack (primary): Rep. Nancy Mace's voting record and missed-vote analysis, including the per-quarter table, and the live Missing Legislators tracker. Comparison figures from the member pages for Thomas Kean Jr., Frederica Wilson, Wesley Hunt, and Dan Crenshaw.
- Bloomberg Government: "Departing House Republicans Are Skipping Votes at Brisk Pace," the source for the 105-figure and the departing-member comparison.
- NPR: "Rep. Tom Kean opens up about depression and his months-long absence," on the disclosed medical reason for Kean's absences.
- Local 10 / Forbes: "Rep. Frederica Wilson confirms eye surgery" and "Wilson retiring after wave of absences."
- PBS NewsHour: "Nancy Mace's political career is up in the air after finishing last in the South Carolina primary," the source for her concession-night quotes.
- Roll Call: "Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman lose bids for governor in South Carolina."
- NBC News: "The House returns from five weeks away," on the recess and the return to session.
Every figure on this page is drawn from the public record: the U.S. House Clerk's official roll-call data and GovTrack's per-member vote analysis, as of September 1, 2026. Maceopedia catalogs the public record about Nancy Mace and takes no position on why any member misses votes; the medical reasons noted for other members are those the members themselves disclosed.
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