Bill Would Give D.C. Vote in Congress

[deadparrot]

WASHINGTON - Two centuries after lawmakers arrived in the federal city and nearly a hundred years after the last expansion of Congress, a bipartisan group of House members says its time to give residents of the nation's capital a vote there.

The legislation crafted by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., and the District of Columbia's nonvoting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), balances the proposed addition of what would be a solidly Democratic D.C. seat with a new seat for Utah, a state that voted 71 percent for President Bush in 2004.

"It is simply inexcusable that residents of the District of Columbia, the capitol of the free world ... do not have a representative with a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives, the People's House," Davis, House Government Reform Committee chairman, said at a news conference Thursday.

Davis said his committee would vote on the measure soon, and that Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., would take up the issue. Davis and Norton have been promoting the D.C. vote issue for years, but this would be the first committee vote.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060511/ap_on_go_co/dc_vote

[Idioteque]

1. If Repubs agree to this, it proves that they play politics with DC

Their argument against giving DC representation is that it is a federal district. If they agree to balance out a DC congressperson with an extra one in Utah, it just shows that they don't want black people voting.

[struggle4progress]

2. Utah's still upset about losing a seat to North Carolina. If a new seat ..

.. is added to the House, it should be allocated to a state on the basis of a census and a formula, not on the basis of a political deal!

[Ragin_mad]

5. It is derived based on the census

The Constitution spells out how many representatives each state gets:

The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one Representative.

[struggle4progress]

6. Constitution doesn't entirely spell out apportionment:

A Brief History of Apportionment
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/Apportionment.htm

[Sgent]

3. Can they even do this?

I don't see in the constitution where non-states get to send full members of congress to Washington.

I support DC Statehood, but this seems somehow troubling (and the entire Utah thing is just weird and probably equally questionable).

[lindisfarne]

4. And they wouldn't get 2 Senate seats; just 1 House seat (unless I misread?

But I doubt that I misread. Utah would get that extra seat until 2012 when the House seats are redistributed; what if a blue state got an extra seat that it wouldn't have gotten without the House being increased to 437?