DC Vote Passes Homeland Security Committee
Feature Story by Lindsey Catlett - 6/15/2007
The DC Voting Rights bill passed, 9-1, in the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on June 13.
The D.C. House Voting Rights Act of 2007, passed by the House of Representatives in April, would give the District of Columbia, which historically has voted Democratic, a voting seat in the House. The bill will also give an additional seat to Utah, a traditionally Republican state, which missed a seat after the last census.
"We applaud the committee's bipartisan passage of this important civil rights law and Chairman Lieberman's and Senator Susan Collins' leadership on this issue […] There is no higher right in American society than the right to vote." said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
The District has a delegate in the House, Democrat Eleanor Homes Norton, who can vote in committee, but she is not allowed a floor vote. Civil rights groups say that this is unfair because the District's residents pay federal taxes like all U.S. citizens.
Committee Chairman, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I. Conn., played a crucial role in successfully shepherding the bill through committee. He secured bipartisan support by co-sponsoring the bill in the Senate with Republican Orrin G. Hatch from Utah.
"I feel optimistic that this is the year we will finally bestow upon the citizens of the District the civic entitlement that every other federal tax-paying American citizen enjoys, no matter where he or she lives. […] It is a national disgrace that the greatest democracy on the planet treats the citizens of its capital city this way, and it is time now to right this historic wrong," said Sen. Lieberman, in a June 13 press release.
The bill has enjoyed wide support by both Democrats and Republicans. "I don't see this as a partisan issue; I see this as a fairness issue," said Democratic Sen. John Tester of Montana. Republican Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota said that denying D.C. residents a vote in the House is "paternalistic and fundamentally wrong."
Ranking Member Sen. Susan Collins, R. Maine, who added two amendments to the bill, one stating that the District will not have senators and another to require quick judicial review said, "I believe that residents of the District of Columbia should have voting representation in the U.S. House of Representatives as a matter of fundamental fairness."
The next step in the bill's final approval process is a full Senate vote, which will likely occur in the next few weeks.
