Letter to the Hon. Paul D. Ryan, Speaker - D.C. House Voting Rights Act of 2007

Letter

Dear Speaker Ryan:

District of Columbia residents and I are grateful that you, as well as then-Representative Mike Pence, voted for the D.C. House Voting Rights Act of 2007 (H.R. 1905), which would have granted the District full voting rights in the House of Representatives. As Representative Pence said during the floor debate, the bill "is a constitutional remedy to a historic wrong." I write to request that the House rules for the 115th Congress permit the District's delegate to vote in the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, subject to an automatic revote if such vote is decisive. When permitted, the delegate vote has had no adverse impact on the operations of the House or on the majority, but its importance to the nearly 700,000 taxpaying American citizens who live in the District cannot be overstated.

While the courts have never ruled on the constitutionality of a bill like the D.C. House Voting Rights Act, they have ruled on the delegate vote. Both the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit have held that the delegate vote is constitutional under Article I of the U.S. Constitution.

In Michel v. Anderson, the U.S. Court of Appeals noted that the longstanding practice of the House is to allow delegates to vote in standing committees and found that the Committee of the Whole vote was not constitutionally distinct from that practice. The court said, "Suffice it to say that we think that insofar as the rule change bestowed additional authority on the delegates, that additional authority is largely symbolic and is not significantly greater than that which they enjoyed serving and voting on the standing committees." Consequently, the Committee of the Whole vote is markedly different than the full voting rights representatives of the states have on the House floor. In Michel, the court specifically considered whether only representatives of the states can constitutionally vote in the Committee of the Whole, and concluded that this vote is simply a "minor addition to the office of delegates [that] has [no] constitutional significance."

The House rules have permitted the delegate vote in three Congresses. The automatic revote provision was triggered only four times in six years of voting, with three in the 103rd Congress, none in the 110th Congress and one in the 111th Congress. While the delegate vote has no significance to the work of the House, District residents, as you can imagine, value the vote, however insignificant or symbolic it may be to others.

The American citizens who live in the nation's capital have always been proud to fully participate in all of the obligations of citizenship, including fighting and dying in every war, beginning with the Revolutionary War, paying full federal taxes and serving on federal juries. Indeed, District residents pay the highest per capita federal income taxes in the country. I ask only that the House, where I am privileged to serve, grant D.C. residents the modicum of respect the vote in the Committee of the Whole would afford.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Eleanor Holmes Norton

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