D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton delivered a speech calling for passage of the D.C. Voting Rights Act, which would grant full voting rights for the District’s elected representative in the U.S. House.

With delegations from most other states yet to take their seats in the Pepsi Center, the District of Columbia’s delegation did their best to make up for the relatively empty house during D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton’s speech by cheering loudly and chanting, “We want the vote!”

Norton was the first speaker of this second day of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

“The nation’s founders staked everything on creating a country where there would be ‘no taxation without representation’ anywhere in America. In that tradition, Democrats proudly support the vote in Congress for the 600,000 citizens of our nation’s capital,” Norton said.

Invoking Martin Luther King Jr., Norton energetically called for the Democratic Party to to follow the principle that all Americans should have equal rights — including full voting rights for the citizens of the U.S. capital.

Norton also spoke to one of the D.C. voting rights movement’s main arguments, that D.C. residents serve and die in the U.S. military, yet lack a vote in Congress.

“We will keep the promise made to the unknown soldier who was the first to die from the District in the war against taxation without representation, and we will keep that promise for 21-year-old D.C. National Guard Specialist Darryl Dent, the first D.C. resident to die for his country in Iraq,” she said.

Norton called on members of the U.S. Senate, especially Republican members, to pass the D.C. Voting Rights Act, which cleared the U.S. House last year.

“If George Bush won’t sign the D.C. Voting Rights Act, its most prominent co-sponsor, our next president, Barack Obama, will,” Norton said.

The D.C. delegation immediately broke out in to chants of “We want the vote! We want the vote!” as Norton finished her remarks. D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5) got even more specific.

“We want statehood! I wanna be a state!”, he shouted to anyone who could hear.