No one attends unless the entire majority is there.Are the Democrats never supposed to leave the chamber or something? I'm not sure what people wanted the Democrats to do?
They need a quorum to pull this trick. The quorum is met with 61 attending members. Republicans had 55 members and Dems had 9, meeting the quorum. Then they called a snap vote and outvoted the Dems. I would accept either the Dems skipping the ceremony or the 9 Dems not being there at that time.
Just, don't let them take advantage of procedural rules to give up unnecessary power, it can't possibly be that hard.