Last year ended on a bit of a sour note for District voting rights, but activists aren’t letting a little bad news stop them. After being stymied by Republican leaders in the closing weeks of the 109th Congress, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) and D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton re-introduced legislation on January 9 to grant the District one voting seat in the House of Representatives. The legislation, known as the Fair and Equal House Voting…

The debate over voting rights for the District’s delegate in Congress is bubbling up at the very beginning of the 110th Congress. Under the newly minted Democratic-controlled Congress, it seems we here in Washington are closer than ever to obtaining full-fledged representation in the House of Representatives. This morning at the ceremonial swearing-in of the Congressional Black Caucus, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi specifically mentioned D.C. voting rights in her remarks, prompting a standing…

It seemed like it would be our year. After lobbying throughout most of 2006, voting rights activists and their allies in Congress had all but convinced House Republicans to go along with a plan to grant the District one voting seat in the House of Representatives. The relevant congressional committees had signed off on the legislation; Utah, which would similarly gain a seat in a partisan tit-for-tat exchange, formally endorsed the idea; President Bush indicated…

Update: Scratch everything — no voting rights for D.C. this year. We’re a step closer, yet still so far away. As the Post reported today, Utah has played its role in helping the District get a voting seat in the House of Representatives by agreeing to a re-districting plan that would give them one more seat in Congress. Their decision to do so has been the key to pushing the D.C. Fair and Equal House…

Amidst tough questions in an early afternoon press conference today on the loss of the House, the war in Iraq, and the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, President George W. Bush faced a question he wasn’t expecting — on District voting rights. A reporter asked Bush on whether he would support legislation currently moving through Congress that would grant the District one voting seat in the House of Representatives and may come to…

Step by step, inch by inch. That’s how legislation that would grant the District a voting seat in the House of Representatives is proceeding, but at least it’s going somewhere. The House Judiciary Committee is set to hold a hearing today on the D.C. Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act, a legislative proposal put forth by Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) and D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton that would finally give the District a full…

It was mid-May when we found out that a bill that would grant the District a voting seat in the U.S. House of Representatives was finally moving forward, having met with the approval of the House Government Reform Committee. Yesterday news came through that the legislation — known as the D.C. Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act — may soon overcome another obstacle, putting the District one step closer to voting representation in the…

When it comes to fighting for District voting rights, activists face two main challengers — the U.S. Congress and themselves. Members of Congress just either don’t care much about whether or not the District’s 600,000 residents have voting representation, or believe its a constitutional mandate written in stone that they shouldn’t. They can be swayed. But many District-based voting right activists differ sharply on what the best approach to gaining voting rights is — some…

Pretty much everything has been proposed to get the District its long desired voting rights, but not much progress has been made since the city’s residents were disenfranchised in 1801. Will today be the day that changes? We can only hope so. At 9:15 a.m. today, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) and D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton formally introduced new legislation that would grant the District one full voting seat in the U.S. House of Representatives….