D.C. Voting Rights Bill Set for Crucial Senate Vote
posted 4:29 pm Fri September 14, 2007 - Washington
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton marches for D.C. voting rights on July 25.
At least one Republican backer, Utah Senator Bob Bennett, says he will vote for the bill only if it includes two amendments that would address his concerns about its constitutionality.
One would prevent the bill from being used to give D.C. representation in the Senate.
The measure's fate will be determined in a procedural vote scheduled for Tuesday.
The bill's supporters are optimistic, calling the issue of D.C. voting rights the most important civil rights struggle of the day.
The district currently has a delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is allowed to vote in House committees.
Conservative Utah, which narrowly missed a House seat in 2000, was added to the bill in hopes of winning more Republican support.
Latest Comment on D.C. Voting Rights Bill Set for Crucial Senate Vote
Winstrv
8:49 pm on 09/17/07
HarleyFanNow: The land was given back to Virginia in 1847. Who were they pandering to? Republican or Democrat? I don't think they were pandering to either party but to business concerns. When I talk about pandering, I equate it to a certain party doing whatever it can for its' partys benefit rather than the people. Each party does it and I don't like it no matter who does it. You didn't comment on making DC a city of Maryland which solves the representation problem and gives the land back to Maryland, who it belongs to. If you don't think a Senate seat will be the next goal, read the history of DC. First it was the vote, next a city government, than a representative for DC, now a vote, and next .....Give DC back to Maryland and this all goes away.
In 1846, the population of Alexandria County, who resented the loss of business with the competing port of Georgetown and feared greater impact if slavery were outlawed in the capital, voted in a referendum to ask Congress to retrocede Alexandria back to the Commonwealth of Virginia. Congress agreed to do so on July 9 of that year. The slave trade, though not slavery, in the capital was outlawed as part of the Compromise of 1850.
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