Legal Commentary

GOP Rejects D.C. Voting Plank

By TChris

Citizens of the District of Columbia can vote in a presidential election, but they have no voting representative in the House of Representatives and no representation at all in the Senate. A delegate to the Republican National Convention from D.C. reports that the voting rights issue was of primary importance to the D.C. delegation. They tried to introduce a voting rights plank into the Republican platform, but the measure found little support.

Of course it didn't. Too many Democrats live in D.C. The GOP has no interest in allowing citizens to vote if they might vote for Democrats. Better that they should go unrepresented in Congress, from the GOP perspective.

At the Democratic National Convention, the right to vote was taken more seriously: [more...]

"The nation's founders staked everything on creating a country where there would be 'no taxation without representation' anywhere in America. In that tradition, Democrats proudly support the vote in Congress for the 600,000 citizens of our nation's capital," [Eleanor Holmes] Norton said [in a speech on the Convention's second day]. Invoking Martin Luther King Jr., Norton energetically called for the Democratic Party to to follow the principle that all Americans should have equal rights — including full voting rights for the citizens of the U.S. capital. ...

Norton called on members of the U.S. Senate, especially Republican members, to pass the D.C. Voting Rights Act, which cleared the U.S. House last year.

"If George Bush won't sign the D.C. Voting Rights Act, its most prominent co-sponsor, our next president, Barack Obama, will," Norton said.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 02, 2008 (boomark / email).