A group of D.C. voting rights activists are protesting Republican Arizona Rep. Trent Franks' Glendale district office this afternoon over legislation he's introduced on the Hill that would prohibit abortions in the District after 20 weeks. more ›

MORE 2:28 p.m.: D.C. Vote Executive Director Ilir Zherka just returned our call, and takes issue with our characterization that the D.C. House Voting Rights Act is "dead." more ›

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Remember those billboards that popped up in the 1980s that counted up the national debt, dollar by dollar? Pretty scary, huh? Well, District voting rights activists want something similar for their cause. Today the D.C. Council held a hearing on legislation that would allow the city to place two large LED billboards -- one outside the John A. Wilson Building and the other outside the new Washington Nationals stadium -- that would display the amount... more ›

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced yesterday that he intends to bring the D.C. Voting Rights bill (S. 1257) to the Senate floor during the week of September 17. The bill passed the House this spring and has already cleared two Senate committees, though Reid was unwilling to bring the bill to the floor before the August recess, expressing concern at the time that it had not quite secured the 60 votes it would need... more ›

Breaking just now: The DC Voting Rights Act (now H.R. 1905) is scheduled to return to the House Floor tomorrow, Thursday for a vote. The move comes after a week of speculation that Majority Leader Steny Hoyer had removed the bill from this week's schedule for unclear reasons. Today it is now definite: the bill will come to a vote tomorrow. The bill originally stalled on the House Floor last month after three Republican... more ›

It's easy to dismiss yesterday's Voting Rights March. Skeptics can point to the estimated number of participants (anywhere from 2,000 to 6,000, depending on who you ask) and claim that in a city of almost 600,000, that's not very good turnout. They can point to the cause -- a voting seat in the House of Representatives -- and argue that the tough road it faces in the Senate and the veto it will likely receive... more ›

Last year ended on a bit of a sour note for District voting rights, but activists aren't letting a little bad news stop them. After being stymied by Republican leaders in the closing weeks of the 109th Congress, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) and D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton re-introduced legislation on January 9 to grant the District one voting seat in the House of Representatives. The legislation, known as the Fair and Equal House Voting... more ›

Last week's hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on legislation that would grant the District a voting seat in the House of Representatives seemed to go swimmingly. Mayor-to-be Adrian Fenty and outgoing mayor Anthony Williams played nice among the 200-person crowd, no one on the committee chimed in to argue against the legislation -- all seemed to be moving forward. Almost. Committee chairman Rep. James Sensenbrenner has apparently expressed displeasure with a provision of the... more ›

It was mid-May when we found out that a bill that would grant the District a voting seat in the U.S. House of Representatives was finally moving forward, having met with the approval of the House Government Reform Committee. Yesterday news came through that the legislation -- known as the D.C. Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act -- may soon overcome another obstacle, putting the District one step closer to voting representation in the... more ›

Pretty much everything has been proposed to get the District its long desired voting rights, but not much progress has been made since the city's residents were disenfranchised in 1801. Will today be the day that changes? We can only hope so. At 9:15 a.m. today, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) and D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton formally introduced new legislation that would grant the District one full voting seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.... more ›

Is that the sound of cats hissing and clawing? No, it's merely D.C. Vote and D.C. Watch, two District-based non-profit political organizations, going at each other. The two, which have usually peacefully co-existed and even complimented each other's work, recently engaged in an online volley of arguments and accusations. On the one side, D.C. Watch's Gary Imhoff and Dorothy Brizill, on the other, D.C. Vote's Ilir Zherka. So far four rounds have been fought, with... more ›