Voting Rights: What Happens Now
After yesterday's announcement that House leaders were shelving legislation that would grant the District a single vote in Congress, the measure appeared to be all but dead. Activists and proponents of the legislation disagreed with that assessment, though, arguing that it wasn't the proposal that was at fault -- it was merely the timing. They'd get the legislation, which would also grant Utah an additional seat in the House (at least until the next Census), back on the floor soon enough.
But will they? The legislation has been floating around since 2006, when it was originally introduced by now retired Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) and D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton as the perfect pragmatic compromise -- one seat for Democratic D.C., one for Republican Utah. Since then, activists and residents have hitched their wagons to the hope that the bill -- though only a small step toward full representation -- would get the District further in the fight than it had ever been. Opponents, led by the Statehood Green Party, derisively noted that the legislation would grant nothing more than "Taxation with One-Third Representation."
Three years and various setbacks later, District residents find themselves with a bill that has been repeatedly hijacked by various members of Congress and loaded with amendments that would grant a voting seat at the expense of home rule, most especially on a significant public safety issue -- guns. Frustration isn't in short supply, and patience with Congress has all but evaporated.
Worse yet, the deadline underpinning the legislation's grand compromise is fast approaching. The 2010 Census and congressional reapportionment will grant Utah the additional seat they would have gotten through the voting rights legislation, thus denying the District the main point of leverage they may have had over Republicans.
There are still six months left in 2009 to work on the measure, but considering the raft of other issues Congress faces and the fact that much of the summer is spent in recess, time isn't something this bill has a lot of. In a Post article on the recent defeat, Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) all but admitted that the legislation wouldn't have a second shot this year. "Now people are going to move onto other things," he said.
And not just on the Hill. Local activists -- especially those who have long pushed for statehood -- are likely to use the legislation's defeat as evidence that a step-by-step approach to voting rights just can't work. In the same Post article, Council member Michael A. Brown (I-At Large), chair of the council's new Special Committee on Statehood and Self-Determination, argued that new options will have to be considered. "We have to put everything back on the table," he stated.
What that means and how long it will take is of course the remaining unanswered question. Nothing in D.C. voting rights happens quickly, and short of a miracle (or presidential intervention) we're once again looking at months of debate over direction, strategy and tactics.