Most bills that die in the House die because a committee chair or the majority leadership never schedules them, and there is usually nothing rank-and-file members can do about it. The discharge petition is the one exception — a procedure that lets a simple majority of the House pull a bill out of committee and onto the floor over the objection of both the committee and the leadership. It is rarely completed, but its existence shapes what leadership chooses to bring up on its own. This guide explains how it works, why the signatures are public, and what the historical record shows about its success.
How does a discharge petition work?
The discharge procedure lives in clause 2 of House Rule XV. Its threshold is 218 signatures — a majority of the House's 435 members. That number is the whole point: it means a discharge petition can only succeed when an actual majority of the House wants the measure considered, which is precisely the situation in which the majority-party leadership's refusal to schedule a bill is overriding what the chamber as a whole would do.
The process has built-in waiting periods so it cannot be used to bypass committees instantly. A measure must have been before its committee for at least 30 legislative days before a member can file a motion to discharge and begin collecting signatures. Once the petition reaches 218 signatures, the discharge motion is entered on a special "Calendar of Motions to Discharge Committees," and an additional 7 legislative days must elapse before the motion becomes eligible to be called up.
Historically, a completed discharge motion could only be called up on the second and fourth Mondays of a month, which added further delay. That timing was loosened at the start of the 116th Congress (2019), so that the motion may now be brought up at a time designated by the Speaker.
Why are the signatures public?
For most of the discharge rule's history, the names of members who signed a petition were confidential unless and until the full 218 threshold was reached. That changed in the 103rd Congress (1993), when the House made the signatures public information; today the Clerk updates the list of signers on a running basis.
The shift matters because it changes the political dynamics of a petition. When signatures are secret, a member can quietly decline to sign without any public consequence. When they are public, both signing and not signing become visible acts: supporters can point to the growing list, and a member who supports a bill but has not signed the petition to force a vote on it can be asked why. Publicity turns the petition from a private headcount into an open pressure campaign.
How often do discharge petitions actually work?
Direct success is rare. According to Congressional Research Service data covering 1931 through 2002, 563 discharge petitions were filed. Of those, only 47 obtained the required signatures, 26 led to a discharge vote on the floor, 19 of the measures passed the House, and just 2 ultimately became law. In other words, gathering 218 signatures is difficult, and even a measure that clears the House by discharge still has to pass the Senate and be signed to become law.
Those numbers understate the tool's influence, though, because of what analysts call the threat effect. Leadership can see a petition approaching 218 signatures, and it will sometimes schedule a vote on the measure — or report an alternative — to preempt a successful discharge and keep control of the floor. When that happens, the underlying goal (a floor vote) is achieved without the petition ever formally succeeding, so the count of "completed" petitions does not capture every case in which the procedure changed the outcome.
Where did the 218 threshold come from?
The modern discharge rule dates to 1931. The signature requirement has not always been 218: from 1931 to 1934 a petition needed 145 signatures (one-third of the House), and in 1935 the House raised it to 218 (one-half of the House), where it has remained. Setting the bar at a full majority is what ties the procedure to genuine chamber-wide support rather than a determined minority.
How this fits the rest of the process
The discharge petition is best understood against the backdrop of how much power committees and leadership normally hold. Our guide on why bills die in committee explains the default — that a committee chair can bottle up a bill indefinitely — and our guide on the House Rules Committee explains the leadership's control over what reaches the floor. The discharge petition is the narrow, high-threshold escape hatch from both. For the full path a bill travels when it is not stuck, see how a bill becomes law.