The Senate this week will vote on whether to proceed with a bill that would give the District a voting representative in Congress.
A procedural vote scheduled for Tuesday marks the most progress a District voting bill has made in more than a dozen years, but significant hurdles remain that could make it difficult for the legislation to become law in the near future.
Advocates of the D.C. Voting Rights Act, including Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s representative in the House (who is permitted to vote on legislation as long as she doesn’t affect the outcome), Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, R-Va., and D.C.’s Democratic mayor, Adrian Fenty, have been trying to round up the 60 senators needed for the bill to clear a procedural vote and move to the floor for debate.
“It’s close,” an aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., a supporter of the bill, said Friday.
Norton is more optimistic.
“We think we have 61 votes, but we don’t know that for sure,” she said.
Norton has argued that it is an injustice to deny a congressional vote to District residents, who pay taxes and serve in the military, among other civic duties.
Opponents, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., believe the D.C. voting bill is unconstitutional and that creating an additional voting seat in the House requires a constitutional amendment.
The bill would also create a fourth, Republican-leaning House seat for Utah, which in any event is slated to gain the additional representative after the 2010 census.
Norton said McConnell “is putting great pressure” on Republicans to vote no.
If the vote fails, the bill will die in the Senate. If it achieves the 60-vote threshold, Reid plans to schedule debate in the next few weeks, an aide on his staff said.
At that point, the bill faces potential obstruction from Republicans who may try to attach amendments deemed unattractive to Democratic senators.
Sen. Robert F. Bennet, R-Utah, backs the bill but plans to attach an amendment that would nullify the bill if it resulted in the creation of two Senate seats for the District. The District is allowed a nonvoting “shadow” senator.
The bill passed the House earlier this year.
If it clears the Senate in the coming weeks, it will face a serious veto threat from President Bush, although the bill’s co-sponsor, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, said he believes he can persuade Bush to support it.
