Prince George’s County Council members passed a resolution Tuesday in support of getting the residents of the District of Columbia a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“I think it’s the right thing to do,” said Council Vice Chair David Harrington, the resolution’s main sponsor.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s representative in the House, said giving Washington residents a vote would benefit their neighbors in Prince George’s.
“I think you could expect that we are in the same part of the political spectrum as most Prince George’s residents are,” she told The Examiner, “and that reinforces and adds a vote to the position of most Prince George’s residents.”
The council took the action a day before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee was scheduled to vote on whether to move the bill to the floor. The bill, which the House already has passed, would expand the House by two seats, one for the District and the other for Utah.
Holmes Norton said she was “delighted” by Harrington’s decision to introduce the resolution.
“It does show me that our bill has now got a life of its own because nobody called the council member to ask that it be done,” she said.
But Holmes Norton said she isn’t surprised about Prince George’s support. “Many of them are from D.C.,” Holmes Norton said. “And many of their relatives still live inD.C. We call them Ward 9 and consider them one of us.”
U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., told The Examiner that he is “strongly in support” of the voting rights bill.
Although he thinks giving Washingtonians a representative is “more of a human rights issue,” Cardin said it would also give a vote to another person “who understands our region.”
Ilir Zherka, executive director of voting-rights organization DC Vote, said, “Having a vote in the House and over time representation in the Senate will strengthen the hand of the regional governments.”
