After letting us all enjoy a good summer break, next week the U.S. Senate will start debating legislation that would grant the District a voting seat in the House of Representatives. And in preparing for what is sure to be a spirited battle, big-name voting rights activists have recently stepped up the pressure with two back-to-back op-eds in Washington papers.

Yesterday Maryland’s former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele and former Oklahoma Republican Rep. J.C. Watts penned a piece in the Washington Times arguing that just like during the fight against slavery during the times of Abraham Lincoln, pushing for District voting rights should be a matter of principle for Republicans. They wrote:

The journey to this point in our nation’s history has been both painful and rewarding. Tax-paying American citizens have voting representation regardless of race or gender — and location. Geography should no longer be a barrier for the citizens of Washington, D.C., to participate in our democracy, nor should it be a proxy for race.

And today, the champions of the entire idea — that’s Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), D.C. Del Eleanor Holmes Norton, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Ut.) — took to the pages of the Post, similarly pitching the merits of District voting rights. They argued:

We do not believe that the nation’s Founders, fresh from fighting a war for representation, would have denied representation to the residents of the new capital they established. Some of these residents of Maryland and Virginia were undoubtedly veterans of the Revolutionary War, and residents of both states had voting representation. When accepting the land for the District, the First Congress honored a covenant to these first residents to observe existing laws of the donor states. They pledged that, when jurisdiction passed to Congress, it would “by law provide” for preserving the residents’ rights. It is time to fulfill that promise by passing our historic bill.

It’s great to see pressure being applied like this. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has consistently threatened a filibuster, so we hope that the words of his fellow Republicans can serve to convince him that such a measure wouldn’t serve his party well. With as bad as things are going for the Republican Party these days, maybe a little push for voting rights would give them something to feel proud of.