In principle, I agree with with the move to allow some sort of national representation to the residents of the District of Columbia. Historically I understand why that’s not the case, but, (regardless of the other pros and cons of the status of DC), it’s simply wrong to deny them voting representation in Congress.
That said, and despite despising the efforts of the GOP to derail the proceedings with gun control amendments (I despise all non-germane amendments and riders and the like, no matter who introduces them), I’m not at all confident that the representation legislation proposed by the Dems is, in fact, constitutional. Make it an Amendment, and let it be passed on its own merit around the nation, but my sense is that it can’t be done just by legislative fiat. (We’ll leave aside whether it’s then right to have representation in the House and not the Senate.)
Honestly, I hadn’t heard much about this until I ran across the Guardian article above. I need to do a bit more research.
This is old news Dave, though the GoPer’s trying to derail it is new. As an idea it has been kicking around for a few years, but it wasn’t until linking it to Utah getting an other seat did it get any support from the GoP.
Really it is a no breainer for the GoP, support it, then torpedeo it in the courts so the DC get’s screwed again and keep the seat in Utah. But, this is the GoP we are talking about.
Yeah, I didn’t quite get the Utah bit. Is the idea that the seat is actually part of Utah’s apportionment (Constitutionally), but that they graciously cede the election of it and its vote to DC? That would be … odd.
Ummm…
Close.
Really it all started back in 2000, before folks in places like Texas were busily Gerrymandering congressional districts, there was the census and reapportioning of the House seats.
Instead of being smart and having it based solely on X amount of Population means you get Y amount of seats, we are stupid in this country and redivy up a finite number of seats every decade, and in 2000 Utah lost a seat to another state while they still gained population, they just did not gain enough to keep from losing it (to Colorado I think). This has stuck in their craw for the past seven years, and then someone had a bright idea of simply adding two seats, one for Utah (GOP) and one for DC (Democratic) and everything would be puppies and butterflies.
The best fix IMHO would be to simply go back to having X amount of
Population (say 250,000) is one seat in Congress. But then I am not the wearer of the shiney pointed hat either.
I think the reapportionment thing makes more sense — otherwise you’d keep adding to the number of congresscritters in aggregate, and heaven knows we have enough of them as-is. If that means that a state loses seats because other states are growing faster, them’s the breaks.
I still don’t see how this would be constitutional.
Well, considering that the current 435 limit is 646,952 people, it is slowly getting to the point that it is almost meaningless and there is still an Amendment floating around out there to set the limit at like 100k max per representitve from 1791.
As to the constitutionality of it all…it might and up being a can of worms since the 435 limit is by a law. So if adding two more seats by a law would be unconstitutional someone could turn right around and challange the PL62_5 law and we could have 10K+ representitives in one swell foop.
Hmm. Interesting. I’d forgotten the 435 limit was a law, not Constitution.
That said, the 14th Amendment apportions membership among the states.
Article I further notes:
So it seems to me that the number of reps can, in fact, be increased by law (and with some redecoration), but DC can’t get a Representative unless it’s a state. That’s not what’s being proposed. You would need a Constitutional Amendment, similar to the 23rd which gave them voting rights for President.
More stuff on Wikipedia on this (of course): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_voting_rights and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_Vote_in_House_of_Representatives
I actually thing retroceding the city (except a core non-residential area) to Maryland makes the best/cleanest sense.