“Taxation without Representation.” It’s the unofficial slogan of the nation’s capital, is seen on license plates throughout the city and almost won a place on the District’s flag. A bill currently before the House of Representatives, however, has a good chance of putting that phrase to rest.
No, no one is planning on abolishing your taxes (they are, like death, inevitable). But after years of negotiations, spurred on by the District’s non-voting delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a compromise agreement that would give the District a voting representative now sits before the House.
Voting representation would bring enormous benefits to the city’s residents, including Georgetown students. Voting House members have the opportunity to provide all sorts of benefits for local interests, either in the form of federal contracts or protecting federal institutions such as local military bases. A vote on the floor on the House would give Norton, a former Georgetown law professor, greater ability to lobby for benefits to, say, local universities.
The politics surrounding D.C. voting rights are complex, in large part because Republicans don’t want to give the Democrats another safe seat in Congress (the city has voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in every election since District residents were allowed to vote for president in 1961.) This political calculus is what caused the crushing defeat of Norton’s 1993 attempt to grant statehood to the District — and why the new bill has such a great chance of passing.
Under the bill proposed by Republican Tom Davis (R-Va.), two new seats would be added: one reliably Democratic District and one extra district in Utah, the most Republican state in the union.
Utah barely missed the population cutoff for gaining a seat in the last redistricting, and they are ardent supporters of this bill. Norton and Utah’s Republican governor have made strange bedfellows this week testifying in favor of the bill before a House committee.
Currently, this bill requires the new district to be a statewide Utah district, to prevent the state from redrawing the lines in order to kick out Utah’s sole Democratic representative. This could be a deal-breaker: Norton has suggested that Republicans may try to kill that limitation in a committee, which would in turn kill much of the Democratic support for it.
With a population greater than Wyoming, there is no reason why this city of half a million people should not eventually be on equal footing with all other states, two Senators and all. For now, a voting House member is the “domestic partnership” solution to this problem: an important step forward, but not fully solving the problem of unequal representation.
