Voting Rights Bill Re-Introduced; Faces Challenges

Anybody interested in drafting La Jenkins to chair the STFU! For Democracy Coalition?

It's called "incremental change." Try Googling it sometime.

i'm all for councilman brown's billboard, but i have a feeling the that lerners wouldn't give it a prominent location in the ballpark.

I don't get these people. They want full House and Senate votes. Currently we have neither. We may soon have a House vote. They don't want that. They want either all or nothing. That's just dumb and childish. And unrealistic. What are they going to do - threaten to hold their breath until they get all they want? It's much easier to get a House vote than a Senate set of votes. That pesky Constitution gets in the way of the Senate dream. So wouldn't it make much more sense to go along with the Norton bill, knowing that it gets "only" a House vote, and keep working for Senate votes? Why the absolutist view? Everyone knows only Sith lords think in absolutes.

And the Brown bill is just lame. Doesn't it run afoul of the DC Fine Arts Commission or whoever holds the architectural whip over Penn Ave?

"the billboards would serve to bring attention to the amount of taxes District residents pay without having voting representation in Congress."

How does it make clear we don't have a vote in Congress? Is that also in lights?

I am all in favor of the Norton-Davis bill and Kwame Brown's sign. Both positive steps forward.

Stand Up is made up of incredibly passionate, yet politically naive, supporters of DC.

"...the billboards would serve to bring attention to the amount of taxes District residents pay without having voting representation in Congress."

Will the fact that we don't have congressional representation also be in lights? It's a matter of emphasis. If that is not also in lights, the billboard seems like it might emphasize or tax-paying status over the reason why such is objectionable. What would be the point of that?

Doesn't LED lead to brain damage? Maybe La Jenkins has been licking the sign.

While advocates of the DC Voting Rights Act claim that they "can bring the dawn of a new democracy to DC," I'm not so sure. They are of course referring to the well-intentioned but deeply flawed DC voting rights legislation, that if passed, and deemed constitutional, would afford DC residents a voting representative in the House of Representatives as well as an additional House seat in the House for the state of Utah. But is it constitutional? Since no Congressional Research Service or US Department of Justice legal analysis, to my knowledge, has ever been conducted on Congress's inherent power to legislate a single vote for DC in Congress, for reasons that remain unclear, DC Mayor Fenty, the City Council, DC Delegate Norton, and the House Governmental Reform Committee will be relying in major part on the highly partisan legal opinions written by 1) Kenneth Star, who was hired by the House Governmental Reform Committee under Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), and 2) DC Appleseed, to support their novel theory. But there are other noted constitutional scholars, including Prof. Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, who take strong exception to the theory and have been largely ignored. DC does so at its possible peril.

It should be noted, for instance, that in a recent DC voting rights case, Adams v. Clinton (2000, US District), the courts commented "how deeply Congressional representation is tied to the structure of statehood" and that "the Constitution does not contemplate that the District may serve as a state for purposes of the apportionment of congressional representatives"; and in Michel v. Anderson (1994, US Appellate) the courts held that a House rules change granting DC and territorial delegates a vote in the Committee of the Whole would be unconstitutional but for a so-called ”savings clause” that prevented the non-voting delegates from voting if their vote proved decisive because DC and territorial residents were not “people of the several states”; and in Clarke v. US (DC Circuit, 1989) and Palmore v. US, 411 US 389 (1973), the courts held that Congress enjoys plenary authority over the District under Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 17 only so long as Congress does not “contravene any provisions of the constitution." Can Congress simply ignore Article I, which confers the right of congressional representation on the so-called “qualified” people of the several states, without making DC a state or a part of a state or by passing an amendment?

Should the DC Voting Rights Act pass, it will surely be challenged. Likely, a restraining order will be issued preventing DC's representative from voting until all constitutional questions have been determined. But what if, at the end of a protracted litigation, DC's single House vote is declared unconstitutional, but Utah's extra seat is upheld? Will the legislation fail as a whole or will only DC's portion be strike down? The current legislation contains a so-called “nonseverability” clause that states that if any provision in the bill is declared invalid “the remaining provisions… shall be treated as invalid”; but there's ample precedent to suggest that courts aren't bound by such boilerplate language (Bizko v. RIHT Financial Corp held, for instance, that “a non-severability clause cannot ultimately bind a court…”). Without more specific language about Congress's true intentions regarding severability, the courts will turn to the legislative history for clarification. Statements made by the Committee Chairman, the Committee Report and the Floor Debate will be crucial. Otherwise, Utah could walk off with its extra House and electoral vote, with DC never casting a single vote. That's hardly the dawn of a new democracy for DC. To me, it looks more like a Republican Trojan Horse rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue in the full light of day.

Those in opposition to the DC Voting Rights Act are hardly politically naive. But those supporting this bill are likely wearing constitutional blinders, unable to see the constricting legal precedents that have hamstrung US jurisprudence on this issue since 1820. Moreover, the argument that this bill is justified because it represents a triumph of incrementalism is also highly questionable. One-third representation after 200 years of continuous struggle to achieve equality represents a definition of incrementalism that is this side of tortured. At this rate, should the bill ever be deemed constitutional, we'll likely achieve full congressional representation by the strategy of incrementalism in the year 2407. Waiting 600 years to achieve fundamental human rights is hardly incrementalism; it's more like political masochism of the first kind.

You should save your breath, Vince and Timothy. Giddy supporters of half assed (actually, one-third-assed) appeasement legislation aren't going to want to hear well-reasoned and researched legal arguments. If they want to celebrate while the powers that be hand them a stale cookie and then laugh at their naïvete behind their backs, let 'em. They'll figure out the rest eventually on their own.