DC Vote mailed 41,000 petitions to the White House.

It looks like President Barack Obama’s silence on D.C. voting rights will continue.

D.C. Shadow Representative Mike Panetta caught part of the White House press briefing yesterday, where a reporter asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs if Obama would be mentioning the District’s lack of voting rights in his address to Congress, as many activists have been asking. “I have to admit, I haven’t the slightest idea,” he said. “I don’t know whether anybody has seen the petitions or anything about what that is.”

Gibbs was referring to to the 41,000 petitions DC Vote mailed to the White House last week asking that Obama recognize the city’s continuing disenfranchisement and urge legislators that something be done about it.

We suppose it’s still possible that maybe, just maybe Obama’s chief speechwriter — a District resident himself — could sneak in a line or two between when the final version is reviewed and it actually gets fed into the teleprompter. OK, that’s extremely unlikely, but there’s always hoping.