September 18, 2007
McConnell Moves To Block D.C. Vote Bill
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell set himself firmly in the path of the D.C. Voting Rights Act yesterday, calling the measure unconstitutional and paving the way for a long battle ahead. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scheduled a cloture motion for the bill, which would grant the District of Columbia a full voting member of the House, for this afternoon.
On the Senate floor yesterday, McConnell said that "every resident of a state... is entitled under the Constitution to congressional representation. Yet no similar representation is accorded to the residents of areas that are not so designated," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.
The cloture measure needs 60 votes to pass. A Washington Post editorial tallied up the numbers yesterday, coming up with definite yeas from five Republican senators as well as all 51 Democrats and independents. High-profile Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine are among the Republicans supporting the measure, but McConnell's hard-line stance against the bill could dissuade other members of the GOP from joining them.
Virginia Rep. Thomas Davis -- a Republican -- was an initial driving force behind the bill, which Joe Lieberman, I/D-Conn., is sponsoring in the Senate. GOP-leaning Utah would also gain another voting member of the House in this version of the legislation, anticipating gains in the next census and balancing out Democratic-leaning D.C. voters. The bill easily passed the House in April.
D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and the District's current nonvoting representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton, gathered with a group of about 60 protesters holding "I Demand The Vote" signs yesterday behind the Dirksen building.
"Not since segregation has the Senate blocked a voting rights bill, and this is a voting rights bill," Fenty said.
President Bush has threatened to veto the bill if it reaches his desk.
McConnell did offer another potential avenue if the current measure fails. He said he wasn't opposed to amending the Constitution to allow for D.C. voting rights, according to CongressDaily. "If we want to give the residents representation, then we should begin the amendment process," he said. "But we cannot, we must not, circumvent the Constitution by arrogating powers to ourselves that it does not give us itself."
Some constitutional back-up could come from Sen. John Warner, R-Va., who told the Post he plans to vote against cloture today and instead introduce a constitutional amendment that would grant the District statehood status.
