Carol Schwartz - D.C. Voting: A GOP Issue - washingtonpost.com

Carol Schwartz - D.C. Voting: A GOP Issue - washingtonpost.com: "D.C. Voting: A GOP Issue Opposition to a House Seat Goes Against Party Tradition By Carol Schwartz Thursday, March 22, 2007; Page A21 Having personally written to President Bush and Congress numerous times over the years urging them to support voting rights for the citizens of our nation's capital, I was disheartened to learn that the Republican leadership is working to defeat legislation that would add a voting member from the District of Columbia and a voting member from Utah to the House of Representatives, and that the president is thinking about vetoing the bill. As a fellow Republican, I beseech them to reconsider. News accounts indicate that Republican opposition is based largely on 'constitutional concerns.' However, respected constitutional scholars have argued that a congressional vote for the District is well within the bounds of the Constitution. Former solicitor general Kenneth Starr and Patricia M. Wald, a former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, jointly wrote, 'There is nothing in our Constitution's history or its fundamental principles suggesting that the Framers intended to deny the precious right to vote to those who live in the capital of the great democracy they founded.' Viet Dihn, a Georgetown University law professor and principal author of the USA Patriot Act, argued in a paper submitted to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that it is constitutional to give the District a vote."