Rep. Ben Cline
Representative for Virginia’s 6th District
pronounced ben // klīn
![Photo of Rep. Ben Cline [R-VA6]](/https/www.govtrack.us/static/legislator-photos/412832-200px.jpeg)
Our work to hold Congress accountable only matters if elections are decided by counting votes. After the 2020 Presidential Election, President Trump, his advisors and associates, and Republican legislators collaborated in a failed coup to have the election decided by themselves rather than by voters.
Cline was among the Republican legislators who participated in this. Shortly after the election, Cline joined a case before the Supreme Court calling for all the votes for president in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states that were narrowly won by Democrats — to be discarded, in order to change the outcome of the election. In the case, Republicans proffered lies and a novel legal theory which the Supreme Court rejected. (Following the rejection of several related cases before the Supreme Court, another legislator who joined the case called for violence.) On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, Cline voted to omit Arizona and/or Pennsylvania from the counting of presidential electors, which could have altered the outcome of the election in Trump’s favor.
In 2023, Trump associates and top advisors pleaded guilty to submitting a fraudulent slate of electors to Congress from Georgia, making false statements about purported widespread fraud in the election, and tampering with voting machines after the election, admitted in civil court to posing as fake electors in Wisconsin, and were convicted of contempt of Congress for withholding documents during its investigation and assaulting police officers at the Capitol. Trump associates and top advisors are also currently facing charges for submitting fraudulent slates of electors to Congress in Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and Wisconsin. Trump himself faces related criminal charges in state court, and a federal investigation which terminated because he won re-election alleged that Trump sought to ignore true vote counts, manufactured fraudulent slates of presidential electors, and used the January 6 riot to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election. Trump was impeached but not convicted in 2021 for incitement of insurrection related to the same events. (He was also impeached but not convicted of using the presidency to solicit the help of a foreign government to benefit his reelection in 2019, and he was convicted in state court in 2024 for falsifying business records to cover up acts that he believed might have hurt him in the 2016 election.) The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups one member of which was convicted of sedition, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors.
Analysis
Legislative Metrics
Read our 2024 Report Card for Cline.
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Cline is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the House of Representatives positioned according to our ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).
The chart is based on the bills legislators have sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 4, 2021 to Feb 21, 2025. See full analysis methodology.
Committee Membership
Rep. Ben Cline [R-VA6, 2019-2026] sits on the following committees:
Enacted Legislation
Cline was the primary sponsor of 1 bill that was enacted:
Does 1 not sound like a lot? Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law. But there are other legislative activities that we don’t track that are also important, including offering amendments, committee work and oversight of the other branches, and constituent services.
We consider a bill enacted if one of the following is true: a) it is enacted itself, b) it has a companion bill in the other chamber (as identified by Congress) which was enacted, or c) if at least about half of its provisions were incorporated into bills that were enacted (as determined by an automated text analysis, applicable beginning with bills in the 110th Congress).
Bills Sponsored
Issue Areas
Cline sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:
Government Operations and Politics (30%) Education (22%) Commerce (11%) Finance and Financial Sector (7%) Health (7%) Agriculture and Food (7%) International Affairs (7%) Immigration (7%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Cline recently introduced the following legislation:
- H.R. 418: Ensuring Accountability in Agency Rulemaking Act
- H.R. 404: Hearing Protection Act
- H.R. 420: Federal Grant Accountability Act
- H.R. 422: No Subsidies for Wealthy Universities Act
- H.R. 419: Protecting America From Spies Act
- H.R. 416: No Welfare for the Wealthy Act of 2025
- H.R. 421: Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 2019 to Feb 2025, Cline missed 24 of 3,238 roll call votes, which is 0.7%. This is better than the median of 2.0% among the lifetime records of representatives currently serving. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absences, major life events, and running for higher office.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
- The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
- Office of Ben Cline for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
