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 Rights Act, is currently before the House Judiciary Committee, and voting rights activists hope to have it before the full House in February. In a press briefing last week on the matter, D.C. Vote Executive Director Ilir Zherka recognized that the legislation’s re-introduction represented a “second chance to finish this marathon,” also admitting, “we’re in the last few miles…[they’re] the most difficult.”

And the obstacles keep coming. Yesterday, the Stand Up! for Democracy in D.C. Coalition called for the legislation to be withdrawn, calling it “unequal” and demanding that the District be granted voting rights in both houses of Congress. Coalition President Alise Jenkins stated:

A single vote in the U.S. House of Representatives falls far too short of fulfilling the goal of full citizenship for the people of the District of Columbia. Now that Congress has finally focused its attention on the District’s lack of voting representation, we need to seize this opportunity to move forward immediately to full representation in the House and Senate.

The coalition similarly argued against the legislation last year, going as far as to lobby members of Congress to vote against it.

In related news, Council member Kwame Brown (D-At Large) introduced legislation on January 9 calling for a large LED billboard to be placed on the Wilson Building and on the new baseball stadium listing the amount of federal taxes paid by District residents. Already supported by 10 of the 11 members of the D.C. Council, the billboards would serve to bring attention to the amount of taxes District residents pay without having voting representation in Congress.

Picture snapped by Pak Gwei