Voting Rights for District of Columbia

VOTING RIGHTS FOR DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I have initiated this Special Order on behalf of the people of the District of Columbia who are second per capita in the Federal taxes they pay to support our Federal Government; yes, including this House and Senate and all the Armed Forces and our exquisite government throughout the United States, and who have fought and died in every war since the establishment of the Republic. In their name, I come forward.

I came forward Tuesday in a 5-minute Special Order simply to inform the House that I had just filed my vote, my bill, that is to say, refiled the bill that Representative Tom Davis and I had filed and hoped to pass in the 109th Congress, the Fair and Equal D.C. House Voting Rights Act. I came in gratitude to my own party. I came also in some frustration. It is impossible to hide that frustration.

I represent people who have been frustrated for 200 years and don't want one single moment more of frustration by having a second-class Member of the House of Representatives while paying first-class taxes and dying and fighting in every war that our country has ever fought, including this war where lives continue to be lost in such large numbers and for what cause. They do not ask, they simply fight like other Americans.

I had hoped to be able to vote on the very bills that have been in discussion here this week, particularly the bills on which Democrats ran and perhaps were responsible for our capture of the House. And my deepest regret was that my Committee of the Whole vote that was taken from me when the Democrats came to power was not automatically put back into the rules.

To his great credit, the majority leader indicates that he intends to introduce a provision to that effect. And I know I speak for myself and all of the delegates when I thank him about thinking about us and about how deeply we feel about that vote. For myself, I have come to the floor to say that I have had to pass that vote. I won't get to vote on the six items. I have been pleased to be able to speak on them as usual.

I am at this point moving forward to where I have been instructed by the people of the United States. They don't even want the Committee of the Whole vote confused with what they are entitled to, and that is the full House vote.

Mr. Speaker, before I go further, I have a number of people I must thank. The bill I introduced today was not a bill that I authored. It was originated by my good friend who also lives in the region, Representative Tom Davis of Virginia, who has grown up in the region and has seen the District of Columbia without a vote and believed that at least a vote on the House floor was virtually mandated by any Congress controlled by either party. He was in the majority and he initiated this idea because it came to his attention that the most Republican State in the Union had missed getting full voting rights, were chafing at that because they believed they were entitled and they had gone all the way to the Supreme Court to get them, and believed that this provided out what turns out to be the case, probably the only opportunity the District of Columbia will have to get its full voting rights in a very long time.

I want to thank the majority leader who lives in the region who has been one of the most steadfast proponents of D.C. voting rights and never gives up and who always stands with us and to whom we will be eternally grateful.

I have special thanks to Henry Waxman, the Chair of the Government Reform Committee, who has been the Democratic leader of the bill that I bring forward today for all 4 years which we have worked on it. He is always a strong supporter of District home rule and for District of Columbia voting rights. He was here years before I came to Congress, and I am second only to him in supporting these issues. He is one of the great problem-solvers of the Congress, and he has been instrumental in bringing this bill forward. It is impossible to believe it could have happened without Henry Waxman.

I want to thank the Democratic and Republican members of the Government Reform Committee, who in the 109th Congress literally gave us virtually a tie vote of Republicans and Democrats favoring this bill: 15 Democrats, 14 Republicans.

I want to thank Representative John Conyers, a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus, the dean of the caucus, who has carried this idea again long before I ever thought of coming to Congress.

At the same time, I want to thank my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus who since the founding days of the caucus have given D.C. voting rights a priority, who believe with me that it is an issue of discrimination based on race, and for that matter on location. I say that and will explain it later because of the origins of our voteless condition.

I want to thank Senator Joe Lieberman, who with many other Democratic Senators in the Congress have carried my bill for full voting rights for the residents of the District of Columbia, the No Taxation Without Representation Act. We have reluctantly but with great realism embraced the House-only act because we understand the spirit of the Congress, that it has virtually never acted all at once to do what it is supposed to do. So we know that we have to proceed in an incremental fashion.

I must thank my good colleagues from the State of Utah who have worked hand in glove with me every step of the way: Jim Matheson, the only Democrat in that delegation; Rob Bishop and Chris Cannon who have thrown aside party lines and thrust themselves into this bill from the beginning.

I want to thank the two Senators from Utah, Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, who sent word to their leadership that they were prepared to have this bill come to the floor at the end of the 109th Congress for unanimous passage.

That would have happened, in my view, because the traditions of the Senate are that if a bill affects only one State, as a matter of Senatorial courtesy, the Senate defers to those Senators. It is heartbreaking that the 109th Congress punted the bill and robbed us of the opportunity to have that Senate vote in December.

I have to thank the Governor of Utah, who came here to testify for the bill and has worked valiantly with the Democratic minority in Utah as well as with his own party.

I do want to read from the letter that the Senators sent asking for the bill to be considered right away because, you see, the bipartisanship we must preserve in this bill. They said in their letter to their leaders, Leader Frist and Leader Reid, a letter signed by Senator Bennett, Senator Hatch and Senator Lieberman: ``It is urgent that Congress fulfill its obligation to provide the voting representation that Utah is entitled to as a result of changes to its population. Likewise, we recognize that the 600,000-plus Americans who live in the District of Columbia are without a voting Member of Congress. No doubt the citizens of Utah and the District face different challenges in greatly differing parts of the country and with greatly differing lifestyles, but they share a commonality: the right to be represented in our country's legislature.'

If ever there was a win/win piece of legislation, I think most Members would agree this is it. Certainly the American people agree: 82 percent of Americans support equal voting rights for the District of Columbia in Congress. That is 82 percent, up 10 percentage points in just 5 years.

This professional poll shows some astounding results because then you want to look and see, is this piled up all on one side of the country or one grouping or one race, and you see the same thing throughout. Once people realize you pay Federal income taxes, and if you go to war the way we do, if the blood of the United States runs in your veins, you give up on the question of whether there should be voting representation in the Congress of the United States.

All of the figures are in the high seventies or eighties. Northeast, Midwest. The South is the highest, 84 percent. Or if you look, at have a member of the military, they are 82 percent. These are people who believe in voting rights for the District of Columbia. Regularly attend religious services, 82 percent.

Ages 55-plus, 82 percent; 18 to 34, 87 percent ages. We can find no variation in these figures, and I don't think you will find any variation anywhere in the world.

This is the only country in the world where the residents of the capital do not have the right to vote in their national legislature. You can imagine why there is such great impatience in the District of Columbia. Imagine not having voting rights. Putting aside the taxes for a moment, when in the Vietnam War you had more casualties than 10 States, when in World War II you had more casualties than four States, and in World War I you had more casualties than three States, and in the Korean War you had more casualties than eight States.

Let me finally say a word about the bill, and I am so pleased to see other Members of Congress come to join me in this Special Order.

My thanks again to the originator, the author of this bill. As it turns out, he has given us the only chance we will ever have. The Congress of the United States in House and Senate has never increased its number except on a nonpartisan basis. Democrats have never got it by themselves, Republicans have never gotten it by themselves.

Everybody remembers Alaska and Hawaii. You want to know how deep this goes, slave States couldn't get in unless a free State could. That is the history of our country. I regret that there has to be that kind of equivalence, but I want everybody to know: Utah somehow disjoined from this bill kills it. So I thank Utah for giving us the only chance we will ever have, particularly since I am not sure that we will have another State ever that missed it by the skin of their teeth and would be willing to take this risk with us.

This bill was 4 years in the making after Mr. Davis introduced it. My thanks to him will be eternal because he was gracious in working with me when I wanted matters added to the bill. For example, I said to him, I could not even sponsor the bill unless it also went to the Committee on the Judiciary because that is the committee of jurisdiction. And it was Mr. Davis who convinced Mr. Sensenbrenner to allow us a markup.

I said that there had to be an increase of two seats so no Member would think that they would lose a seat because we were gaining a seat. And I asked for something that was purely symbolic but important to the residents of the District of Columbia: I asked Mr. Davis who was then chairman of the committee if there could be a vote on my bill, the No Taxation Without Representation Act, so my people will know that I will never give up until they have full citizenship even if Congress requires us to do it step by step.

But that is how we got home rule. Indeed, now we have the atrocious situation where my budget and laws have to sit here before we can spend our own money. So everything happens in this House incrementally.

Mr. Speaker, Members on the floor who have been particularly gracious to me, always with me when I needed help, and I have needed help a lot as a Member from the District of Columbia with no delegation and no Senators, and some of them have come down in order to indicate their concern about our denial of voting rights and to say their piece. I could not be more grateful to them.

I am told that the first to arrive was the gentlelady from the Virgin Islands, who is in perhaps not a comparable position because I am sure that the people of the Virgin Islands are glad not to have to pay taxes to the Government of the United States, but who indeed represents American citizens as free and full as any others in the House; and I am pleased she has come down this evening, Mrs. Christensen of the Virgin Islands.

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Ms. NORTON. I want to thank the gentlewoman. The selfless spirit of her remarks, the intelligence of her remarks is nothing new in this body. Indeed, it reminds me of the same spirit she has shown when our own citizens from New Orleans came in huge numbers to her great city and they took them in, because they were Americans.

I also want to thank her for citing and reminding us that Martin Luther King's birthday is coming up and we are all going to be somewhere celebrating. Well, Martin Luther King would be here saying to this House, particularly to the Democratic majority who has spearheaded this issue for decades now, that now is the moment. Do it now. That is what he said when he was on the Mall. Do it now. Freedom now.

Indeed, the new Mayor of the District of Columbia, Adrian Fenty, who has been particularly active on voting rights, has indicated to me that he will be dedicating January 15 here in the District to DC voting rights and kicking off a campaign on January 15 that he calls Give DC The Vote Now Day in memory of Martin Luther King, who would not want his day used in such trivialities as simple ceremonies.

I also want to thank the gentlewoman for her reference to Mr. McMillan. Because the fact is the reason the District hadn't gotten home rule had to do with race and only with race. Mr. McMillan was a Southern Democrat who stood in the way, because beginning in the late 1950s the majority population of the District of Columbia was African Americans. So race has always stood in the way of our full empowerment. Today, it is as likely to be party. That is why we are grateful to the State of Utah for stepping forward.

I don't mean to say that race is gone from this issue. Residents of the District of Columbia, two-thirds of them African American, see this issue as an up-and-down civil rights issue. They are the only African Americans in the United States that don't have their full civic rights, and they know it, and they treat this issue this way.

I treat race as a simple proxy for party, because we are a big city, recognizing as I do that I know full well what second-class citizenship means. And you have to understand that the reason this is important for the District is not only was it a majority black city beginning in the late 1950s, but it was a segregated city for most of its existence. The schools were segregated. Even when I went to the schools in the District of Columbia. Downtown was segregated. And that was all at a time when Democrats in particular ran this House.

That is why this issue knows no party and why it has huge racial connotations in our country and in the District, and that is why this is a major issue and has been for decades for the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and civil rights organizations across the United States.

They indicate that voting rights for the District of Columbia is second only on their agenda to what this House and Senate achieved on a bipartisan basis last year, and that is the reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

I want to say that, just by point of clarity, I introduced the same bill, essentially, that I had introduced before. That bill had a map in it that had been approved by Democrats and Republicans because Mr. Sensenbrenner, then the Chair of the Judiciary Committee, at the last minute said that he would not accept a compromise that we had all fashioned, that Utah, that our leadership, on both sides agreed to, and that was that there be an at-large seat so there would be no redistricting. The redistricting issue had been a very thorny issue because there is only one Democrat in Utah. He has been the target of gerrymandering. Nobody wanted that on the table any longer. And therefore, we came forward with a compromise of an at-large seat. Mr. Sensenbrenner insisted upon redistricting.

Let me say, the people of the District of Columbia don't care one way or the other, whether it is at-large or redistricting the at-large. The redistricted seat there apparently is perfectly satisfactory to both sides. Whatever is easy, whatever gets me to sit in this seat as something other than the way I sit today, as a second class citizen, is acceptable to us. What we want is the vote, and we want our voting rights in the 110th Congress.

I do want to say that we haven't given up on full citizenship, and we never intend to. But we recognize the way in which the House has always operated, and that is incrementally.

It was not until 1967 that we incrementally began to give this, move this District toward having self government, would you believe. It had no mayor. It had no city council because it had been governed since the 19th century by three commissioners appointed by the President of the United States; 800,000 people then living as a straight out colony in their own Nation's Capital.

Lyndon Johnson abolished the commission and appointed a council. Then, in 1968, they gave the District the right to vote for their own board of education. Then, in 1970, the District got the right to vote for a delegate. And my good predecessor, a man who fought valiantly for our full rights, Walter Fauntroy, became the first Delegate. And then, finally, in 1973, the Home Rule Act itself was enacted, and the District got the right to elect its own city council and its own mayor. And notice, that is 32 years ago only that your Capital has even had the right to self government.

All of this is a real scar on our democracy. The scar has to be taken off of this House and can be this year; and we ask that that be exactly what the House does.

We remind the House that change for the District of Columbia only came at the Civil War, a true indication of the way race has decided matters in the District of Columbia.

My own people came to this city through my great grandfather, a runaway slave. He was in Washington in 1862 when Congress abolished slavery here.

But it is very interesting to note, when you see where the parties stand, that in 1848, when this House was controlled by the Democrats, the Democrats did give the District some home rule. But it gave it the right to have its own Board of Assessors, this is like a council, and voting rights to all white male voters.

It took the radical Republicans, the abolitionist Republicans, to grant black males the right to vote, and that was in 1867. That was the proud history of the Republican Party. And we will never forget the roots of that party, Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President, the President that abolished slavery, first in the District of Columbia, then of course, led our country to the abolition of slavery nationwide.

It was in 1878 that this notion of government, not by this self government that had been set up for white males by the Democrats, that the Republicans had converted so that everybody who could vote in the United States could then vote.

By the way, you notice women were not given the right to vote then, but they didn't have the right to vote anywhere.

But what happened in 1878, when Reconstruction came forward, when the reaction to the Civil War came forward, then we had the Congress, obviously, in the hands of Democrats again, providing that the District of Columbia be governed, not by a self government, as had been allowed, but by these Presidentially appointed commissioners who were, in fact, the government of the District of Columbia until 1974.

Mr. Speaker, occasionally you will hear some opposition to our bill based on the Constitution. Every other day somebody raises a constitutional issue about some bill that comes to the floor. And we concede that there is some division of opinion on whether or not Congress can give the District the right to vote through the Constitution, or whether it would take a constitutional amendment, as has been tried in the past, but the requisite number of States did not also ratify.

On the basis of very respectable constitutional opinion, and we are certain that the bill is constitutional under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress has full plenary power over all matters relating to the District of Columbia. We are certain that Congress can have the right because we are certain that that is what the framers intended.

When the Constitution was ratified in 1789, it clearly contemplated that the vote would, in fact, be enjoyed by the people of the District of Columbia. Everybody lived in a state then, including the people of the District of Columbia. But notably, the citizens living on the land designated by the Constitution, in the Constitution itself, as the District, continued to have voting rights until 1801, because that land had been given to the Federal Government by Maryland and Virginia.

When 1801 occurred, and the land came under the total control of the Congress, only Congress could step forward and say, now that you are under our jurisdiction, we just want to assure that you still, you have not lost your voting rights by becoming the Nation's Capital. And the people of the District of Columbia so petitioned, and Congress failed to act. Therein lies the fatal flaw. Congress did not act. But you certainly can't blame that on the Framers.

Imagine, would Maryland and Virginia have conceded the land to create the District of Columbia if they thought they were disenfranchising their own citizens? Impossible. And the Framers themselves indicated that everybody in the United States would have their rights. So we are quite confident that the bill is constitutional, although you will hear words to the contrary from time to time.

We are also confident that if we were to decide to use the at-large seat, as opposed to the map that is agreeable now, that that would be constitutional because every voter in the State of Utah, only for a very short time, because it then could revert, as the State desires, to the present system from an at-large system; but every voter in Utah would have the same equal right with no dilution of that right to elect this at-large member for such period as the State chose to have it.

These issues have been thoroughly vetted, and we have constitutional authority that I think the House would find persuasive. And I ask to be able to enter into the RECORD the testimony of Kenneth Starr, who testified to the constitutionality of the bill. This constitutional lawyer, respected by all for his constitutional background, even as he is regarded as controversial, perhaps that controversial side of his career helps to explain that this bill must be constitutional. And I thank Mr. Starr, and will submit that for the RECORD.
[From the Washington Post, Sept. 17, 2006]

Congress Has the Authority to Do Right by D.C.
(By Kenneth Starr and Patricia M. Wald)

More than 40 years ago, the Supreme Court declared that ``no right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live.' And yet, for more than 200 years the citizens of the District have been denied this right because they have no voting representation in Congress. To its credit, Congress is taking steps to begin correcting this longstanding injustice.

Specifically, the House Government Reform Committee has approved, and the House Judiciary Committee is considering, a bill that would give D.C. residents the right to full voting representation in the House. While conferring this right is surely the right thing to do, a legitimate question has been raised concerning Congress's authority to confer the right by simple legislation, rather than through constitutional amendment. We have carefully considered this question and believe for three reasons the bill is within Congress's authority: It is consistent with fundamental constitutional principles; it is consistent with the language of Congress's constitutional power; and it is consistent with the governing legal precedents.

First, interpretation of Congress's Article I legislative authority should always be guided by the fundamental principles upon which the nation and the Constitution were founded. Those principles include a commitment to a republican form of government and to the proposition that the laws enacted by the legislature should be based on the consent of the governed. 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.

Second, Congress's specific power over the District of Columbia is one of the broadest of all its powers. In the words of the Constitution, ``Congress shall have power ..... to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever' over the District. In a 1984 case decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, on which we both sat, Judge Abner Mikva noted that through this constitutional provision, the Framers gave Congress ``a unique and sovereign power' over the District. In that same case, Judge (now Justice) Antonin Scalia wrote that the broad language of the power gave Congress ``extraordinary and plenary' power over our nation's capital. And in another case, that same court held that this broad power gave Congress authority to ``provide for the general welfare of citizens within the District of Columbia by any and every act of legislation which it may deem conducive to that end.' It is hard to imagine a broader, more comprehensive congressional power than this; and it is also hard to imagine that the power could not be used to advance a fundamental principle of our Constitution--that the right to vote should be extended to all citizens.

Finally, and equally important, the most analogous legal precedent addressing Congress's authority over the District confirms that Congress can act now to give the vote to D.C. residents. That precedent concerned the fact that Article III of the Constitution confers on federal courts jurisdiction to hear suits brought by citizens of different states against each other. But the Constitution did not give any such express jurisdiction over suits brought by or against citizens of the District of Columbia. As a result, Congress, relying on its broad Article I power over the District of Columbia, remedied that unfairness through legislation that extended the right to District residents. In a 1949 case called National Mutual Insurance Co. v. Tidewater, the Supreme Court upheld that extension and also said that Congress was entitled to great deference in its determination that it had power to address this inequity. The logic of this case applies here, and supports Congress's determination to give the right to vote for a representative to citizens of the District of Columbia, even though the Constitution itself gives that right only to citizens of states.

It is not a surprise that our Constitution, ratified in 1789, contemplated that the right to vote would be enjoyed only by ``the people of the several states.' After all, in 1789, all U.S. citizens lived in a state. It was not until 1801, when the process Congress authorized by statute in 1791 to create the District out of lands ceded by Virginia and Maryland was completed, that District residents lost their federal voting rights. There is no reason to believe the Framers intended for this to happen. And in any case they gave Congress power to address the problem. Congress has initiated a process to do so, and we urge it to quickly complete the task. As George Washington said in his first inaugural address, the American people are entrusted with ``the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government.' It is time to extend that model to the citizens of the nation's capital.

Ms. NORTON. There might be some opposition based on the notion that Utah gets one more electoral vote if they get a vote. Now, mind you, Utah is going to get that at some point anyway, probably in the near future. But there is some concern that Utah might get that vote now. And we have the kind of situation that people most fear ever since the 2000 election, that there would be some kind of tie or some kind of dispute; we would have no longer a tied number of electors from Democratic and Republican States; and then you would have Utah with one more vote.

Well, this is an issue that we asked a nonpartisan group about that doesn't think, that has a different view of how the present system operates in any case. The nonpartisan group is called Fair Vote, the Center For Voting and Democracy. It is not affiliated with the District of Columbia or with any party.

Apparently, it believes that the national popular vote plan for President is how we should proceed. So they certainly are not making a case for us in any particular way.

But it is important to note what they say about our bill and whether our bill could, in fact, result in a crisis based on the fact that Utah got one new electoral vote. And I am quoting: ``Our estimation of the odds of the District of Columbia Fair and Equal Voting Rights Act directly contributing to a Republican victory in the 2008 Presidential race is,' they say the odds are, ``approximately 400-1,' or, in other words, one chance in 1,600 presidential elections.

I want the Member to stand up who would, on this scintilla of a chance, prefer to see us go without the only chance we have to get a vote now or in the foreseeable future.

I want to thank the House for affording me this time, and the time of the Members who have been gracious enough to come and speak on this issue this evening. It is time that, for us, has been invaluable, simply to let the Members of the House know how deeply we feel that the time is on overtime to grant the people of the District of Columbia their House vote now, in this Congress, the 110th Congress.

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