DC Vote Bill Moves to House Floor
Feature Story by Jenna Sauber - 3/16/2007
If the House votes ‘yes’ next week, one more step will be made in the attempt to give District of Columbia residents a vote in Congress. The DC Voting Rights Act bill passed the House Judiciary Committee (21-15) on March 15.
Bruce Spiva, chair of the board of DC Vote, said since District residents pay taxes, fight in wars, and serve on juries they should be able to have full voting representation in Congress.
"We have fulfilled every responsibility of American citizenship, and yet, we have no say in the passage of our nation’s law, and do not even have ultimate authority over our own local laws and institutions," said Spiva.
At a panel sponsored by the American Constitution Society, Spiva and Walter Smith, executive director of the DC Appleseed Center, said that the Constitution allows Congress broad authority to determine laws and regulations for the District, which they argue includes voting representation.
"Denying people the right to vote based on where they live, or the size of their community, is fundamentally inconsistent with these ideals," Spiva testified at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
If the bill passes both houses of Congress and is approved by the President, it would increase the number of representatives in the House to 437, and give Utah an extra seat. Even with House passage of the bill, supporters say they face an uphill battle in the Senate.
Opponents of the bill say it is unconstitutional because the District cannot be treated as a state.
Supporters of DC Vote counter that the right to vote is about the people, not the land.
"The Act represents a vital effort to correct a form of historic disenfranchisement that disproportionately affects significant numbers of African Americans living in the very seat of our federal government," said Theodore Shaw, director-counsel and president of NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "The bill will give representation to D.C. residents who, for far too long, have been unable to exercise the most basic right of citizenship: the vote."
According to the 2005 Census, 57 percent of DC’s 600,000 people are African American. Spiva says the violation of voting rights crosses all racial and political lines.
"Residents of the District of Columbia can’t vote whether they are Republican, Democrat, or Independent, and whether they are White, African American, Asian or Latino," he said.
