October 9, 2007
Voting Rights to be Delayed Gratification
Today the Post's Mary Beth Sheridan writes that the effort to grant District residents even a modicum of voting representation isn't waiting for better talking points -- it's waiting for better politicians. According to the article, the fight for District voting rights may get its biggest boost in 2009 if a Democrat is elected president and if the Democratic Party can increase its numbers in the U.S. Senate.
Despite the Senate setback, the latest effort is by no means over. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), a co-sponsor of the measure, said he'll try to pick up a few key votes in the next year. If that fails, he said, "I will be ready to start this again in the 111th Congress," beginning in 2009.
Voting rights activists predict next year's elections will result in a Senate -- and possibly a White House -- more favorable to the bill.
Though it's depressing that a democratic right denied to no other American citizen would take a wholesale change of Congress and the White House to move forward, patience is something of which District residents seem to have plenty. There probably isn't much of a difference when an injustice goes on for 206 or 208 years.
Hopefully waiting for 2009 will be like the agonizing day before your 10th birthday when you totally knew you were going to get that G.I. Joe F-14 Tomcat fighter jet. But then your parents acted like they hadn't gotten it for you, and you got all sad. But then they had gotten it for you, it was just hidden away to be given to you after dinner. Boy, 2009's gonna be sweet, what with that F-14 Tomcat -- errrrr -- we mean those voting rights.
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I thought the more interesting aspect of the article was the following appraisal of the general lack of passion among DC residents for the measure:
"We're in a better position today than for the last 30 years," said Bernard Demczuk, a leading D.C. voting rights activist in the early 1990s. But the issue still hasn't galvanized the city's nearly 600,000 residents, he said.
"We're not angry enough," he said. "I think there are 1,500 people who are angry."
Perhaps exemption from paying federal taxes would prove more popular, if residents were given the opportunity to choose.
I'd still prefer a tax exemption to voting rights. It's not like I agree with Eleanor Holmes Norton all that much.
Be careful with your wording. Voting representation in Congress is a democratic right denied to plenty of American citizens in other areas, including citizens who are residents of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
It is more accurate (and more persuasive) to say that the District is the only area in the United States whose residents are denied this fundamental right. That's because those other places above where American citizens have no congressional representation are unincorporated territories, so their territory is not part of the United States. The District is "incorporated,"-- an integral part of U.S. territory-- which is probably the additional factor that leads most of us to believe that citizens living in the District deserve the right to congressional representation, while citizens living in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas have less of a claim.
Who cares? This country is going to vote itself bankrupt anyways with free healthcare and other assorted goodies that come from the money tree. Might as well add some DC votes to make it happen faster.
Guest 3: The courts decided that DC is to be treated as a state for the purposes of the federal income tax, not the case with the territories you mention. The only residents in those other places who pay personal income tax to the IRS are direct Federal employees.
Mike-- that is true for the graduated income tax, but they do still pay some very regressive withholding taxes. My Puerto Rican friends get all riled-up when you say they don't pay federal taxes.