GOP lawmaker floats idea for DC House vote

Every American has three representatives in Congress — a member of the House of Representatives and two senators. Everyone, that is, except the 600,000 people who live in the nation’s capital.

A lot of people don’t realize that the citizens of the District of Columbia are the only people to live in this country and pay federal taxes yet are denied a voting representative in Congress. DC residents have even added “Taxation Without Representation” to District license plates to remind all who see them of this injustice.

For years, Democrats have agreed that this is a mistake that should be rectified, but Republicans have fought any changes because they are well aware that DC residents would vote Democratic — Democrats outnumber Republicans in DC by an 11 to 1 ratio.

There appears, however, to be signs of weakening resistance.

Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) has announced that he is preparing to unveil a proposal that would expand the House of Representatives from 435 seats to 437, and one of the two new seats would be a voting representative for DC. (DC already has a “delegate” to the House elected by DC residents, Eleanor Holmes Norton, but she does not get a vote.)

As Davis recently said on a local radio station, “It’s hard to make a straight-faced argument that the capital of the free world shouldn’t have a vote in Congress.”

The other seat in Davis’ proposal would go Utah, a traditionally Republican state, which has been involved in an ongoing fight with the Census Bureau over whether to count Mormon missionaries from Utah who seek converts around the world as official Utah residents. The bureau says no, the state says yes, and at stake is enough people to give Utah another House representative.

Davis thinks he can take care of both problems. He’ll give Utah the extra House seat state leaders believe they rightly deserve and he’ll give DC residents a real voting member in the House.

As someone who has long marveled at the opposition of giving the people who live in the nation’s capital a voice in Congress, I see Davis’ idea as an important first step.

It strikes me as kind of sad that the only way Republicans would consider giving DC residents a voting representative is to create a new seat elsewhere for a likely Republican pick-up, but I guess that’s just the way politics works.

I don’t mean to sound picky, and I’m genuinely glad Davis is on the right track, but this proposal still wouldn’t address the fact that DC has no voice in the Senate. Davis is right when he says that it’s hard to argue with a straight face that DC residents shouldn’t have a vote in Congress, but even if they were given a House member, it’s equally hard to argue that DC residents should have one-third as many congressional representatives as every other American.

Nevertheless, it’s a good start.