Garling Gauge

DC Voting Rights Fail: GOP Puts Politics Over People

Not everyone has equal rights

The majority of Senate Republicans voted today against the right of District of Columbia residents to vote. The vote was 57-42. 60 yes votes were needed to move the bill forward.

All Republicans voted no except:

• Bennet-UT
• Voinovich-OH
• Collins-ME
• Lugar-IN
• Specter-PA
• Hatch-UT
• Snowe-ME
• Coleman-MN

All Democrats voted yes except:

• Demsbaucus-MT
• Byrd-WV did not vote

244 years after ‘No taxation without representation’ was grieved by America’s original thirteen colonies to the British Parliament, Republicans continue to deny DC citizens this fundamental human right.

While tea faring ships docked at Boston harbor needn’t worry unduly after today’s vote, many citizens are outraged that Republicans are placing party politics above this equaling of American voting rights.

Washington DC has a large African-American population and is polled primarily Democratic. Democrats offered to offset this expansion of Democratic voters into the American electorate by allowing Utah, traditionally a conservative state, to gain an extra seat to disable a Congressional power shift.

But Republicans won’t have it.

Though not Constitutionally provided, the right to vote is a fundamental value of American democracy. Americans have become accepting of the loss of rights in recent years, allowing the Executive branch to rescind numerous civil rights in the name of national security. If we allow our government to deny people habeas corpus and torture them, why make a fuss over a few voting rights?

Voting has been a traditional Western right dating back to the Magna Carta in 1215. Seeing as the residents of the English market town Ashby-de-la-Zouch could vote in the early 13th century, you’d think the residents of the capital of the United States of America could vote in the 21st. 792 years later you’d think our government could get it right.

Minority leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans argue correctly that Article I of the Constitution enables congressional representation for the “people of the several states”, of which the District of Columbia is not a part. The constitutionality of voting rights are not in question. The Bill sought an egalitarian expansion of voting rights beyond the current framework.

Republicans are putting paperwork over people.

DC citizens pay some of the highest per capita taxes in the United States without representation in the Congress that occupies their city. This defeated bill attempted to level the playing field.

But America needs more than a DC Voting Bill.

As Jesse Jackson Jr. wrote in The Nation early last year:

We need to build our voting system on a rock–the rock of adding a Voting Rights Amendment to the US Constitution. The amendment I have proposed in each of the last several Congresses (HJR 28) would provide the American people with a citizenship right to vote. It would also give Congress the authority to craft a unitary voting system for federal, state and local elections–one that guarantees all votes will be counted in a complete, fair, free and efficient manner.

Republican obstructionism of congressional representation is unfair, unpatriotic, and entirely undemocratic.

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See also:

• DC Vote
• Jesse Jackson Jr.’s The Right to Vote

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