September 18, 2007
Live Blogging Voting Rights in the U.S. Senate
2:11 p.m. OK, we should be about ready to get going here. We've been told there will only be about 15 minutes of debate on this before a vote takes place to prevent a filibuster -- as you all know by now, we need 60 for the bill to move forward. I'll be posting updates as things get going, and Martin may pop in with his two cents if he can, so stay with us if you don't have access to CSPAN-2 where you are -- Sen. Hillary Clinton is currently presenting her health care plan on the channel, so, hopefully she's almost done.
2:15: Sen. Joseph Lieberman is introducing the voting rights bill. He's stressing the bi-partisan nature of the solution offered by this bill, giving a vote to D.C. and another to Utah. He's calling for an end to the national embarrassment of the District not having voting representation.
2:20: Utah's Sen. Orrin Hatch is giving a pretty emotional speech about the 600,000 residents of the District who should be represented by a member of Congress. He said: "My God, when has the United States Senate been afraid to debate a constitutional issue as important as this one?" He points out that supporters of the bill such as himself are prepared to accept whatever the Supreme Court might eventually decide, but they're not afraid to take it to them. Orrin really seems fired up about this!
2:26 p.m. Little quorum call interlude. Nice music, CSPAN-2! Now Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is speaking, and suggesting letting this important principle move forward at this time, no matter what you might think about its constitutionality. She's just so reasonable. How can you argue with that?
Voting is about to start. We can see Eleanor Holmes Norton walking around in the back as voting takes place.
2:39 p.m.: It appears Sen. John Warner of Virginia voted against bringing the measure to the floor. We're still waiting for the final tally, but getting the shaft from our neighbor to the south really stinks.
2:49: Still tallying, but a number of other moderate Republicans have since voted nay, including Sen. Chuck Hagel and Sen. Lisa Murkowski. What does Mitch McConnell have on you people?
2:53: Yeas are 57, and Nays are 42. This is, obviously, not good news. We needed 60 yeas to avoid a filibuster, which Sen. McConnell seems fairly eager to go forward with. We'll have more on what this means for the future of the legislation in just a bit.
Photo by Duncan Brook
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Ya know, thinking about this some more. If it means giving nutcases in Utah more say in Congress, screw this compromise.
He's stressing the bi-partisan nature of the solution offered by this bill, giving a vote to D.C. and another to Utah.
As I wrote this morning, that statement is counter-intuitive. When women got the vote we didn't give men two votes to cancel the women out. In 1865, Democratic (Southern) states didn't get extra votes just because all the freed slaves were sure to vote Republican. Is this a civil rights issue or not? If it is, and of course it is, there can be no room for compromise.
yeh. what rusty said.
Twenty-one senators who just voted against can go fuck themselves.
Armsmasher--
I'm quite sure they're already experienced with that; why don't you offer that they do something less familiar?
Love,
Everett
57-42
57-42, so the filibuster succeeds. Only 1 senator didn't vote? I'm amazed more Republicans didn't just not show up, since being absent has the same effect as voting no without having to be listed as voting for filibustering a voting rights bill.
America declares for the world it is not a democracy.
KC -- Based on the earlier post, it seems like Byrd is the only one who skipped out.
In 1865, Democratic (Southern) states didn't get extra votes just because all the freed slaves were sure to vote Republican
Actually, adding states has always been about negotiation and rarely about civil rights. Going from the original Constitutional compromise through the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act to the addition of Alaska with Hawaii, there has always been a negotiation about the likely voting patterns of the new states.
We're not talking about a new state per se here, but it's the same idea nonetheless.
To bitch about Utah getting another seat implicitly assumes that 435 is some "correct" number for the House. It's arbitrary. If we were to add another seat just because we like the number 436 better, it's Utah that would get it. If it takes moving the number of house members to a different and completely arbitrary number to get DC a vote, then so be it.
Besides, if this is about civil rights and the right to representation, then what does it matter that Utah has another vote. There's no such thing as a "canceled" vote. Is my vote "canceled" just because someone moves into the district and votes differently than me? Of course not. There is a right to be counted; there is no right to be decisive.
I would like to write each of those 42 Senators who think it is OK to continue to disenfranchise 600,000 tax paying American citizens by denying them a vote in Congress. Oh wait, they'd just throw away my letter b/c I'm not from their state. What recourse do we have and please, don't say move to Virginia...
They were serving pizza for lunch in the Senate cafeteria today. Why the fuck wouldn't you show up for that?
Again, stop wasting our time with a bill that is blatantly unconstitutional. Do the right thing and amend the constitution.
Congrats to Senator McConnell and his Republican lackeys. The dissenters on this bill should be embarrassed to walk the streets of DC after this one. They may have won this battle - but the war still goes on.
When will the United States Military send troops into itself to make it a complete democracy?
Sorry, but DC has dropped the ball with the voting rights it already has. Voting crackheads into office on a regular basis does not exactly inspire confidence. Maybe with 10 more years of solid mayors and a working school system, then DC can try again. The rest of the US should remain skeptical of giving DC residents a say in how the rest of country is run until DC residents do a better of managing their own house.
There is joy in Mudville tonight! Huzzah on the filibuster!
And, Reid, Utah would be getting an additional representative. An at-large House member. The people of Utah would have two representatives! That's super-representation that would make Utahns more powerful than any other American in terms of their voice on the Hill. That is madness. All to cancel out us liberals. They already have a House vote. Two is unacceptable.
Oh, Guest 15. You bring up the lamest anti-vote argument ever. That somehow we lost our right to vote. You don't lose your right to vote. If so, we'd disenfranchise nearly every state and locality at one time or another. Chicaco politics make DC's look like the ultimate good government. And how about San Diego? Have you taken a good look at their local government in the past couple of years.
So please stop with this tired refrain. At this point it's just stupid.
Wow #15. If you go by that logic, then you'd have to take the voting rights away from almost every major metropolitan area in the country.
Guest 15 - That's not how it works. Voting rights are not conditional on their rational use or the intelligence of the people using them.
I wonder if you thought how much of a slippery slope your statement can lead to.
Guest 15, that's specious reasoning. Mark Foley's seat didn't get taken away because his constituents voted in a child molestor. Those Floridians always had the right to representation: they didn't have to prove themselves "worthy," and we shouldn't either. Can you imagine taking a seat away? Of course not. Now imagine never having one in the first place.
Guest15, using your logic, I'd argue that the U.S. shouldn't be allowed to elect a president given the current leader of the free world.
The issue of the extra seat for Utah is somewhat muddled given that it's alternately portrayed as their fair due, due to an apparent census miscalculation, or a necessary political calculation, plain and simple. Neither argument is, to me, very satisfactory, and both distract from the real issue (disenfranchisement, people!). That being said, I'm pretty ok with this going down in flames, since I'm interested in no less than a rep and two senators, but it's nevertheless unfortunate for this outcome to have been arrived at in such a petty, politicized way.
Doesn't it seem like the Democrats might as well have pushed this off for a couple more years? There may be a bunch of pick-ups in the next Senate, and also maybe a more sympathetic President who wouldn't veto it.
On the other hand Republicans would probably never accept its validity if it was passed by a D-controlled government. That was one of my main doubts about this route to representation anyway: what Congress grants, Congress can take away...
Why do I get the feeling this is going to end up like Geraldo Rivera when he opened the "secret vault of Al Capone?"
Guest #15: You are one stupid sonofabitch. Since when do we have to qualify for deserving voting representation in Congress by voting for local officials who you or anyone else approves of? You betray your ignorance of the most basic concepts of democracy with each keystroke.
And while I'm not usually an online bomb-thrower, I'll make an exception today -- you and "the rest of the US" can go fuck yourselves.
SUPPORT DC VOTING RIGHTS.
Anonymous Idiot #15 - NYC elected a mayor who was dating while still married, Cincinnati elected Jerry Springer mayor and then he wrote a check to a hooker, do I even need to mention the endless corruption in Chicago? By your logic all of these people shouldn't have voting representation on the Hill.
If this effort fails, I really think it's time for whatever the city's equivalent to civil disobedience would be. Not providing escorts to high ranking people, not paying federal taxes. Something drastic has to be done. Clearly petitioning a body that we have no say in and snarky comments on our license plates isn't working.
It's ridiculous that we have to continue to follow the federal government's rules when they won't even let us participate in the discussion.
If Fenty is serious about voting representation, he should force their hand into a full statehood amendment.
Dan
Woodley Park
Guest #15 = some 23 year old Republican hill staffer who's still registered to vote in Bumblefuck, NC and doesn't have to worry about not having voting rights.
Guest 15, you're confused. DC is a mess because its run by Congressional fiat, which it is powerless to affect due to lack of Congressional representation. You can't create stakeholders without given them a stake to hold.
Only 1 senator didn't vote? I'm amazed more Republicans didn't just not show up, since being absent has the same effect as voting no without having to be listed as voting for filibustering a voting rights bill.
Senator Byrd (D-WV) is the one who didn't show up to vote. Byrd, as a former member of the Klan, PROBABLY not a huge fan of voting rights...
Rusty, in the Senate version of the bill, the Utah seat was a regular fourth seat, requiring redistricting, not at large. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with at-large seats, since Ohio had one in the past. Look at how districts work for the Maryland House of Delegates. Are you saying that the people who live in districts with three at-large delegates have more representation than those who live in districts that are split up into three subdistricts, each with a delegate?
Also, Reid is correct. The "extra" representative for Utah isn't anything special. It's just how the calculations work out if the size of the House is increased. Utah really deserves about 3.5 representatives, but since they only come in integers it has to be either slightly underrepresented, with 3, or slightly overrepresented, with 4. Nothing to get outraged about either way.
Reid: It's not an arbitrary number, it's a fucking odd number. Dumbass. Do you even know what happens in the House when there is a tie vote (and don't say the VP breaks it; that's the Senate, stupid)?
Gerhardj, this particular solution can only be brought up now, because the value of the Utah seat (which gets reallocated after the 2010 census) is rapidly diminishing, and the extra electoral vote only works for the 2008 election.
By the time of the new Congress and president in 2009 it'll have to be a completely different bill.
Guest 32, 435 is an arbitrary number, no better than 436 or 437. If there's a tie, then the motion doesn't pass, because it doesn't have a majority. There's a possibility of a tie regardless of whether the number of seats is even or odd because not everyone votes every time. There's usually an empty seat or two, plus people sick or away or voting "present".
I find it amusing that only one person has written about the real problem - that the constitution does not grant the District of Columbia representation in Congress. It really is that simple. And the easiest solution is to revert back to being part of Maryland. Which would suck. We're not going to get statehood. It is not going to happen. And to those of you that get so outraged about this, do you actually vote?
The vote. We got 8 Republicans (Bennett, Coleman, Collins, Hatch, Lugar, Snowe, Specter, Voinovich) but lost 2 Democrats (Baucus, who voted no, and Byrd, who didn't vote but issued a statement opposing the bill).
32: In a tie, the bill fails. It happens because sometimes not every member is there to vote.
30 - yeah, Byrd demonstrated he's not a fan of DC voting rights when he supported a constitutional amendment in 1978 to grant DC full voting rights.
Dumbass.
ehh, screw it. This government is either a democracy or it isn't. Until the "United States of America" begins living up to its own sales-pitch to the rest of the world, we need to immediately cancel all Civics classes in high school.
They can't possibly be teaching that stuff in DC high schools. It would be like teaching Advanced Bludgeoning and Cannibalism to a pacifist vegans.
So make a decision already, America-thing: This is either a proper democracy or all-out police state. I couldn't give a wet shit which it is, just make up your mind already.
No way will Maryland or Virginia ever accept recession of DC into their states. Think about it - Maryland and Virginia suburbs around DC are some of the wealthiest in the nation because of their proximity to DC's jobs. Maryland and Virginia get the benefits of having a city to provide jobs and the ensuing tax revenues without most of the cons of having a major metropolitan city. If you were a Maryland or Virginia resident would you want to have to bear the burden of DC when you are getting a lot of the benefits for free?
Guest 15 is back. Looks like I hit the mark. Go read the Constitution. Better yet, go look at why the founders didn't give DC voting rights in the first place. Your legal argument doesn't hold water, and your "we deserve it" argument doesn't either.
You want to amend the Constitution? Sorry, but given the current state of DC, I don't see a reason to.
Jimmy, if you want people to pay attention to you, don't talk about Virginia when someone brings up retrocession. The landed ceded by Virginia was already retroceded in 1846. All the land now in the District was part of Maryland, so the opinions of Virginians are irrelevant.
What you say about Maryland is true, though.
"Guest 15 is back. Looks like I hit the mark."
Tis better to be thought of a fool, then to open your mouth and remove all doubt. The only thing you "hit the mark" on was your incontrovertible ignorance and/or stupidity. To whit: http://www.acslaw.org/files/Bress%20and%20McGill%20on%20Constitutionality%20of%20HR%201905.pdf
41: Have you ever looked at the reason? It was because a bunch of people besieged the Congress in Philly and the state/city did nothing to stop it. The arguments about a capital-containing state having too much influence came after the fact.
I highly doubt such an incident would happen today, as the federal government now has not only a standing army, but a massive police force. Both of these things did not exist in the 1780s.
Many other countries manage to have the capital in a state (or other independent administrative region) without any problems.
Cite http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/article01/43.html#1
Guest 43, please learn to read. You are definitely the fool. DC is not a State. Again, go actually read the Constitution. Maybe when DC residents can learn to read, then we can consider amending the Constitution.
Guest 45 must be Mitch McConnell. That's the only possible explanation for his incoherent ramblings.
"Guest 43, please learn to read."
Coming from someone who evidently didn't read the document provided, this is pretty funny. A warning though, Guest 41: there are a lot of big words. You might have to have someone else read it for you.
I think it is a bit insulting to accuse all DC residents of being ignorant and stupid. There are those of us who are very educated, and choose to live in the District because it is the capital of the United States. Most of us enjoy the livable, walkable, diverse neighborhoods full of charm and life. I like the idea of a federal district, but we should have full voting rights as a state, or have complete autonomy from congressional oversight. They can control the federal buildings, but leave the district to manage itself. If the other states do not give full voting rights to 600,000 people, they are saying they do not believe in democracy. Do we notice that the naysayers are mostly republicans? Republicans who are in the war for "freedom". They are really just afraid to create a liberal voting district. Thank you enemies of the District.
Hide behind the constitution all you want, but we don't have a vote in DC for purely political reasons, and all of us, left and right, know it.
Somehow sending Americans to die for democracy in Iraq makes sense, though, even though we don't have it in our nation's capital.
It's a disgrace.