Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., renewed the fight for voting rights in the District last week after announcing plans to push legislation granting D.C. a voting representative in the House, according to Congressional Quarterly. The ongoing effort has garnered support from some AU students.
The bill, titled the D.C. Voting Rights Act of 2007, passed the House of Representatives 241 to 177 last April and was introduced by Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., to the Senate May 1, according to pro-voting rights organization DC Vote's Web site. The bill passed the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental affairs with a 9 to 1 vote on June 13, according to the DC Vote Web site.
The bill will most likely pass because the majority of D.C. residents and the congressional majority are Democrats, said Joumana Moukarim, a professor in the School of Public Affairs.
DC Vote Executive Director Ilir Zherka was also confident that the bill would pass.
"We believe we have the votes to pass this bill in the Senate," Zherka said in a Sept. 6 press release posted on the organization's Web site.
Zherka said opponents of the bill should not impede its progress in Congress.
"We call on Senator Mitch McConnell [an opponent of the proposal] to reject any efforts to filibuster this bill, which will expand democracy to the tax-paying residents of our nation's capital. A filibuster of this bill would be unconscionable. No senator has filibustered a voting rights bill since the days of segregation," Zherka said in the press release.
AU students joined thousands of people last April to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to support the legislation originally sponsored by Del. Eleanor Holmes, D-D.C., and Rep. Thomas Davis III, R-Va., that would give one House seat to the District and one to Utah, a state that almost qualified for an additional representative in the 2000 census, The Eagle previously reported.
Danny Maki, a sophomore in SPA, is torn between both sides of the issue. D.C. was intended to be a district separate from state influence, but now the city has a considerable population and there is a clear need for citizen representation, Maki said.
"Everyone should have a right to vote and be represented," he said.
Opponents have said that the voting rights proposal is unconstitutional, citing Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states, "The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states."
"Since D.C. is not a state, it cannot have a representative," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, told Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill.
Last May, Republicans stalled the bill by trying to tie the legislation to a weakening of District gun laws, according to The Washington Post. Republicans had accused Democrats of trying to set a precedent to add two full seats to the Senate and trying to increase Democratic influence because D.C. is primarily Democratic, The Post reported.
Despite Republican opposition, many AU students have actively supported D.C. voting rights.
Casey McNeill, a senior in the School of International Service and the College of Arts and Sciences, was a member of Democracy for D.C., a campus club active during the 2005-2006 school year that tried to raise support for District voting rights.
"It seemed like people were not aware of this issue," she said.
The group tried to get students to call representatives from their home states to support the proposal since only state representatives can vote.
An aide for Reid said the senator could bring the bill to the Senate floor by Sept. 17, according to Roll Call.
