A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Tuesday overwhelmingly backed D.C. voting rights legislation for the second time in nine months, setting up a contentious fight for enfranchisement during the coming weeks in another committee and on the House floor.
Despite the strong objections of a handful of Republicans, highlighted by an attempt to return the District to Maryland, members of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee backed the D.C. House Voting Rights Act by a 24-5 vote. The bill now goes to the Judiciary Committee, where it is scheduled for a hearing today and a possible vote Thursday.
The measure, which passed two committees last year but never reached the floor, would add two seats to the 435-member House, one for the District and the other for Utah. While the vote in judiciary is expected to be a nail-biter, the bill is likely to survive and have its day before the Democrat-controlled House.
“I think this thing is on an unstoppable course to pass the House,” U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., a lead sponsor of the bill, said after the vote.
Supporters of the measure said it is time to right a historic wrong, one that denies 600,000 Americans a vote in Congress because they live within the boundaries of the nation’s capital. To spend billions of dollars exporting democracy while denying D.C. residents representation is simply wrong, they said.
“District residents pay billions of dollars in federal taxes yet get no vote in Congress,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the reform committee’s chairman. “This is not just unfair. It is undemocratic.”
