This coming Thursday voting rights activists will fan out in the halls of Congress, hoping to convince staffers and members alike that legislation to grant the District a voting seat in the House of Representatives should be passed, and passed quickly. But they may face a challenge beyond what mere lobbying can resolve — the U.S. Constitution.

In an op-ed published in the Post’s Outlook section yesterday, Jeffrey L. Farrow, former co-chair of the President’s Interagency Group on Puerto Rico from 1994 to 2001, warned that the legislation pending before the House — which would grant both the District and Utah an additional voting seat — was unconstitutional. He wrote:

District residents deserve a vote in the House — but the bill is misguided. It is based on a novel interpretation of the Constitution. The theory is: Congress has such power concerning the District that it can ignore provisions of the Constitution when legislating regarding the District; in this case the provision that says the House is made up of representatives of the states.

Essentially, until the District is made a state or a constitutional amendement is passed to grant it representatives and senators (an approach that was tried in 1978, but failed after the necessary number of states voted not to ratify), no amount of congressional intervention will fully enfranchise the city’s 600,000 residents. Farrow’s opinion follows that of the Congressional Research Service, which laid out the legal case against the legislation in a Jan. 24 report (found here in .PDF format). The report noted: “Although not beyond question, it would appear likely that Congress does not have authority to grant voting representation in the House of Representatives to the Delegate from the District of Columbia.”