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As the Senate prepares to vote today over whether to close debate on legislation granting the District a voting seat in the House of Representatives, no one can safely say whether the votes will be there to head off a threatened filibuster. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made his opposition to the bill painfully clear in a floor speech yesterday, and voting rights activists have been scrambling to gain enough Republican allies to reach the 60-vote threshold. This morning brings news that the task may have become harder due to Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.).
According to FreeRide, Byrd, the Senate's longest-serving member, announced that he opposes the bill, arguing in a statement:
I oppose S. 1257, because I doubt that our Nation's Founding Fathers ever intended that the Congress should be able to change the text of the Constitution by passing a simple bill. The ability to amend the Constitution in only two ways was provided with particularity in Article V of the Constitution for a reason. If we wish to grant representatives of the citizens of the District of Columbia full voting rights, let us do so, once again, the proper way: by passing a resolution to amend the Constitution consistent with its own terms.But Sen. Byrd's office announced this morning that he would miss the vote, choosing instead to attend an honorary doctorate ceremony from Wheeling Jesuit University on behalf of his late wife.
There are a number of ways to see this. Byrd may really oppose the bill, but may also be sympathetic enough to the goal to want to avoid casting a vote against it. Conversely, Byrd really does have something else to do, and his opposition of the bill isn't strong enough to make him want to change his schedule.
Either way, with Byrd's absence, the Senate (if all other members attend) is left with 49 Democrats, 49 Republicans and 1 Independent. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), the sole Independent, has long been a supporter of the legislation, giving it a surefire 50 votes. On the Republican side, some five senators are committed supporters, though three others, including Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), have expressed sympathies but not committed to a vote up or down. The outcome will likely boil down to how hard Sen. McConnell lobbies his caucus; how actively Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Ut.) lobbies against McConnell and pulls Republicans to vote for the bill; and the impact the influence of Sen. Byrd's statement might have on wavering members.
Whichever way things go, the debate is likely to be spirited. Things kick off at 2:15 p.m., and we'll be live-blogging the whole thing.
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Let's have our fingers crossed that this bill dies ASAP.
Bernie Sanders is also independent.
Fuck that piece of shit Klansman Byrd!
Byrd's absence is the same as a "no" for purposes of today's vote -- which is on cloture and needs 60cvotes regardless of how many Senators vote.
Uh, I think Byrd's statement is pretty damn straight forward. No matter how sympathetic you are to DC voting rights, anyone who has read and understands the Constitution will see the serious problems this bill has. An amendment to the Constitution is the only proper way to grant DC representation. Anything else is shady political dealing.
Byrd is right. This should be done the right way, instead of fucking around, getting everyone's hopes up, and wasting time.
It's not going to pass. sorry.
Seriously, stop wasting your time. Try to get rid of the federal tax for DC residents.
It's good we have guests to set us straight on how open-and-shut the constitutional arguments are rather than listening to people who are actual constitutional scholars.
The whole thing is a sick farce at best.
DC Vote is run by a bunch of criminals and racists.
Ramon R. José Rivera
I agree with Byrd. If you're gonna do this, you've got to do it the right way. A Utah vote pretty much cancels out a DC vote anyway, and 1 vote is a compromise when it should be 3. Full citizenship, or the status quo, but no 1/3 citizenship.
I'm not a resident of DC, but I'm sympathetic to the cause. I'm willing to support either full statehood by constitutional amendment, or retrocession to MD. Whatever gets DC residents to be able to vote for a house member and 2 senators.
If the question about the constitutionality of giving voting rights to District of Columbia residents has a lot to do with the fact that DC is not a state, why are District residents paying income tax? Shouldn't the same constitutional standard apply to voting rights as it does to paying income tax?
Here is text of the 16th Amendment: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
Puerto Ricans do not have a vote in congress, they have full US citizenship and they don't pay federal taxes (except SS and Medicare).
#5 here - I may be a mere guest, but I'm also a lawyer. I never said it was open and shut, but it is seriously flawed. Even if it passed, the chances that it would be overturned by the SCOTUS are extremely high. Especially given the strict construstionists on the court now.
To #12, Congress could have income-taxed District residents before the 16th amendment, since it is a Federal territory.
Why is this issue so partisan? The way it was laid out in this article it very firmly divides along party lines.
Guest 15, because the District will always vote Democratic. The partisan reason on the Republican side to be against this is not just the addition of a reliably Democratic housemember (no big deal in the scheme of things) but the precedent it might have in leading to two new reliably Democratic senators.
Of course a lot of people would be against DC getting two senators for non-partisan reasons too. For instance, DC has zero manufacturing and agriculture, so interest groups for those industries wouldn't want two new senators indifferent to their cause. Also, plenty of states would be against it just because it would dilute their senators' vote, regardless of their respective party.
Does anyone else find Byrd's resemblance to Senator Palpatine... disturbing?
I hope he doesn't use this bureaucratic quagmire as an excuse to raise a clone army to fight the Trade Federation. Not only would that signal an end to the Republic, but it would make for a crappy film.
So the fate of hundreds of thousands of taxpaying black residents rests once again in the hands of an ancient ex-Klansman?
What's really changed?
Even if this bill is unconstitutional, what's the harm in passing it and letting it go to the courts, if for no other reason than to answer once and for all if it's legal or not?
Lord knows a lot of far more questionable bills have most certainly passed easily.
Haha- monkey, I knew he looked familiar...
While I'm definitly no lawyer, can't the argument be made that not having voting rights violates the equal protection clause. I mean we're supposed to be equal but I don't get to vote based on my geographical location...
-Too-lazy-to-register-guest
"what's the harm in passing it and letting it go to the courts"
Oh, I don't know, the millions of dollars the federal government and DC Voting Rights groups will waste litigating it. There's no way it will stand up.
I thought Lieberman had already won the Senate's Palpatine lookalike contest. (If this bill passes I will swear off making negative comments about Lieberman for at least 24 hours -- assuming he doesn't declare war on Iran during that period.)
Guest 21:
So half a million people should have their voting rights denied because the bill may or may not survive legal challenge?
You don't seem to put much of a value on democracy.
Every step this bill advances exposes more people to the issue. Even if it loses in the end, we'll be that much further along on building support for a solution, because more people are aware that there's a problem.
So we should ignore the Constitution just so half a million whiny people can have there voting rights right now [child-like arm flailing]? There's a legal way to grant DC citizens representation. It's long and difficult, yes, but that doesn't mean we should run around existing law.
correction should be noted: there are two independents in the Senate Sen. Bernie Sanders.
and some would argue besides to win an election that Joe wasn't really independent till it benefited him
Exactly, guest #25. There are a few people posting in this thread who are utterly clueless when it comes to constitutional law.
Whichever way things go, the debate is likely to be spirited.
The discussion before the vote was what, 10 minutes long?
It may or may not have been constitutional. Apparently some very good actual constitutional scholars think it was legal. Some do not.
So where was the harm in passing it and letting courts decide.
If they decided it was legal, that would be a jillion times less hell than a constitutional amendment, which every redneck in every Southern state (and a few others to boot) would fight like hell to block.
It doesn't matter whether a constitutional scholar thinks it's legal - only the SCOTUS. And I would bet the farm that they wouldn't. So why waste the time and money? But hey, if DC voting rights groups want to blow all their money litigating a lost cause, go for it.
KC, the question really doesn't require esoteric scholarship, just a conviction that the words of the constitution should bear their plain meaning (when that is ascertainable). Plus, having one's own opinion on the matter is refreshingly protestant...your approach suggests that if Congress passes the bill and a bunch of scholars declare that it's constitutional, well, then, that's all it takes.
The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states, and the electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature.
That's Article I, Section 2. Since DC's not a state, the argument is pretty straightforward that the proposed legislation is unconstitutional. Any argument that DC somehow is a state for the purposes of this article is clearly undermined by our 200-year history of understanding the District otherwise, and by the 23d Amendment, which granted DC presidential electors (who, per Article II, Sec 1, also come from the "states"). That is, if an Amendment was required to give DC presidential votes, an amendment is also required to give DC a representative.
Hillman, the problem with your approach (and it's one that many legislators share) is that it abandons Congress' own duty to support and defend the Constitution. Legislators who ought to know better, who nevertheless throw crap bills at the wall to see what sticks, are undermining the rule of law. The Supreme Court is not infallible, and its powers are limited. Even if they end up striking it down, it will involve years of litigation and questions about the validity of plain Constitutional text. Imagine if Congress passed 200 bills a year that plainly contradicted the Constitution. Many of them would be in force for a period of time until a litigant with standing to challenge each law made his or her way through the court system and had it struck down. The courts are not a cure-all.