A bill to temporarily expand the number of seats in the House of Representatives, giving one to the District and one to Utah, failed to get enough votes to invoke cloture and come to a full vote in the Senate Tuesday.
In order to continue action on the bill, 60 senators needed to vote in its favor, but only 57 senators did so, according to The Washington Post.
If the bill became a law, it was largely expected D.C. would contribute a Democratic voting member, while Utah's member would most likely be Republican.
Although the party balance in the House would not change, some Republicans believe the vote could result in two additional full-time senators in D.C. who would most likely be Democrats, according to the Post.
AU students had different views on the issue.
Katie LaPotin, a senior in the School of Public Affairs and School of Communication, said D.C. should not receive a full voting member of the House of Representatives.
"I believe that D.C. isn't a state and, as a result, it shouldn't get a voting representative," she said in an e-mail. "We have it set constitutionally that the House of Reps can only have 435 members. Additionally, we would then have to extend voting rights to Puerto Rico, America[n] Samoa and the rest of the delegates currently in Congress."
Another student was completely opposed to the idea.
"The law Congress was trying to pass was unconstitutional, because D.C. is given no representation in the Constitution," said Chris Palko, a junior in SPA, in an e-mail. "There would need to be an amendment to change that, like the amendment that was required to allow D.C. to vote in presidential elections. I think the solution is to make D.C. part of Maryland, politically speaking. This way, representation issues could be solved while not adding two new senators and a new representative that would be rabidly Democratic, which Republicans would never allow to happen."
Other students say they favor the bill.
Even though D.C. isn't a state, there is a large population of people who are not represented in Congress, and they should be represented, said Rachel Miller a sophomore in SPA and the College of Arts and Sciences.
The bill was introduced by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., who currently does not have full voting power.
The politicians acknowledged the significance the bill could have for D.C., which hasn't had a voting member of Congress in 206 years, according to an article in the Post. Utah would benefit largely due to the fact that it was denied a seat as a result of "counting irregularities" in the 2000 census, the Post also reported.
The House of Representatives passed the DC Voting Rights Act by a vote of 241-177 in April, and it was introduced into the Senate in May, where it passed in the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, according to DC Vote.
Tuesday's decision came much to the dismay of many voting activists who feel residents of D.C. should be granted a representative in Congress. Many had already expressed their support of the bill in front of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, where a press conference preceded an activist rally Sept. 17, according to DC Vote.
"It's time to end the injustice, the national embarrassment that citizens of this great capital city don't have voting representation in Congress," Lieberman said prior to the vote, according to the Post.
Any decision to grant voting rights to D.C. will likely not come until next year at the earliest, according to the Post.
