Photo by (afm)

Jeez. For someone who prides himself on ranting about the District’s lack of voting rights on a regular basis, I realized today that the last thing I had to say about the city’s longstanding disenfranchisement was on June 10. On that day, we found out that Congress was laying to rest — at least for the time being — legislation that would grant the city a voting seat in the House. Since then, well, it’s been radio silence from DCist HQ. (OK, so there was that one piece on June 24 about President Obama’s license plate, but let’s be honest — that’s not terribly substantial, now is it?)

It’s not that nothing has been happening in the world of D.C. voting rights. The folks at DC Vote traveled to Mississippi to target Rep. Travis Childers, a Democrat who last year orchestrated another move to gut the District’s gun laws. They also launched the “I Am D.C.: I Demand the Vote” campaign, which, as Sommer noted recently, includes ads of yours truly freaking people out on buses. But hey, it’s for a good cause, right? Members of the D.C. Council also attended the National Conference of State Legislatures 2009 in Philadelphia in late July, where they hosted a “D.C. Statehood Reception” for 350 attendees.

Otherwise, though, it’s been quiet on the voting rights front, which we can trace to the fact that no one really knows where to take it next. The specific legislation that Congress has debated over the last two years is unlikely to come to the floor again, not when it could simply be weighed down by another amendment concerning the District’s gun laws. Not to mention that one of the bill’s main selling points — an additional seat for Republican Utah — becomes null the closer we get to the 2010 Census. Without the voting rights bill to focus the energies of D.C. voting rights activists, we’re again stuck debating the larger issue of what we should really be fighting for. Statehood? Just the one seat in the House? Lumping the District back into Maryland? Opting out of federal taxes?