Legislative shuffle could give D.C. vote in Congress - USATODAY.com

Legislative shuffle could give D.C. vote in Congress - USATODAY.com: "Legislative shuffle could give D.C. vote in Congress" By Kathy Kiely, USA TODAY WASHINGTON — For more than 200 years, residents of the District of Columbia have lived in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol without having a vote that counts there. For the district's 550,000 residents, that may be about to change. Monday, the Utah Legislature will set in motion a plan that would permanently increase the size of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 1911. Gov. Jon Huntsman summoned the lawmakers into a special session last week to approve a redistricting plan that would give the predominantly Republican state a fourth member of Congress. Utah came within a few hundred votes of qualifying for a fourth House member in the last Census. Mike Morrow, a spokesman for Huntsman, says the count failed to include Mormon missionaries who were out of the state at the time. In return, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the longtime delegate for the predominantly Democratic District of Columbia, would win full voting privileges. That would increase the number of House members from 435 to 437. Ray Smock, director of the Robert C. Byrd Legislative Research Center at Shepherd University and a former House historian, says it's about time. "This business of trying to squeeze the whole country into a 1911-sized bag is ridiculous," he says. The U.S. population has more than tripled since the 1910 Census, from 92.2 million to more than 300 million. That means there was one representative for every 212,000 Americans in 1911 compared with one for every 690,000 now. Backers press for the House and Senate to approve legislation increasing the House's membership before this congressional term ends, as early as next week. "This compromise is the closest the district has come to having a voice in Congress," Mayor Anthony Williams says. "It's amazing to me that anyone can still argue that D.C. residents — who pay taxes, fight in wars and participate in every other way in our democracy — should in any way not be represented." The District of Columbia has petitioned for representation in Congress since 1801, when residents lost the right to vote for House and Senate members in Maryland and Virginia, the states that ceded land to create the federal city. The district's population is larger than that of Wyoming, which has two senators and one House member. "America is unique on Earth in not granting voting representation in the national Legislature to people who live in the capital city," says Jamin Raskin, a constitutional law professor at American University. Opponents of congressional representation for the District of Columbia say it's not constitutional. "The Constitution clearly provides how congressmen and senators are allocated to states," says Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C. "The federal city is not a state." Others see politics as the reason D.C. has been denied congressional representation. "The district is too Democrat and too black," says Ron Walters, a political scientist at the University of Maryland. Washington's population is 57% African-American; 73% of its voters are registered Democrat. The Utah-District of Columbia representation deal, crafted by Norton and Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., attempts to neutralize partisan opposition by balancing the federal city's gain with one for Utah, almost certain to elect another Republican. President Bush won the state in 2004 with 67% of the vote. The district would get a House vote under the Davis-Norton bill but still be without representation in the Senate. Bush has not said whether he would sign the legislation, but Norton says she's confident "he'll do the right thing." Davis urges fellow Republicans to support a House vote for the District of Columbia. "As American men and women are fighting for democracy in Baghdad," he says, Congress should take "a momentous step toward bringing democracy to our nation's capital."