[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 154 (Friday, December 18, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H11771-H11773]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 PRIVILEGES OF THE HOUSE--PROVIDING VOTE FOR THE DELEGATE TO CONGRESS 
    FROM THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA IN CONSIDERATION OF PRESIDENTIAL 
                        IMPEACHMENT RESOLUTIONS

  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise to offer a privileged resolution that 
is at the desk.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 613

       Whereas rule IX of the Rules of the House of 
     Representatives provides that questions of privilege shall 
     arise whenever the rights of the House collectively or the 
     Members individually in their representative capacity are 
     affected;
       Whereas under the precedents, customs, and traditions of 
     the House pursuant to rule IX, a question of privilege has 
     arisen in cases involving the constitutional prerogatives of 
     the House and of Members of the House; and
       Whereas the House is prepared to consider a resolution 
     impeaching the President, and the Delegate to the Congress 
     from the District of Columbia seeks to assert the 
     constitutional prerogative to cast a vote in the 
     consideration of the resolution: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved,

     SECTION 1. PROVIDING VOTE FOR DELEGATE FROM THE DISTRICT OF 
                   COLUMBIA IN CONSIDERATION OF PRESIDENTIAL 
                   IMPEACHMENT RESOLUTIONS.

       Pursuant to section 2 of article I of the Constitution and 
     the twenty-third article of amendment thereto granting the 
     people of the District of Columbia the right to vote in 
     presidential elections, the Delegate to the Congress from the 
     District of Columbia shall be permitted to cast a vote in the 
     House of Representatives in the same manner as a member of 
     the House in the consideration by the House of any resolution 
     impeaching the President or Vice President of the United 
     States.

     SEC. 2. EFFECTIVE DATE.

       Section 1 shall apply with respect to any resolution 
     impeaching the President or Vice President of the United 
     States that is considered by the House of Representatives 
     after the adoption of this resolution.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Does any Member wish to be heard on whether 
the resolution constitutes a question of the privileges of the House?
  Ms. NORTON. I ask to be heard, Mr. Speaker.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman from the District of 
Columbia is recognized.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, most Americans do not know and most people 
in the world are unaware that the

[[Page H11772]]

residents of the Nation's Capitol do not have any representation in the 
Senate and cannot vote on this floor.
  But the Constitution of the United States, in its 23rd amendment, 
does give to the residents of the District the right to vote for 
President and Vice President of the United States. The same 
Constitution that gives the District the right to vote for President 
must recognize the right of District residents to representation for a 
vote on removal of the President.
  I have submitted a narrowly-tailored resolution, along with a legal 
memorandum, for a narrowly-tailored right. I am not here asking for the 
delegate vote in the Committee of the Whole at this time. I am not 
asking for a House vote. I am asking to vote only on impeachment, in 
order to perfect the rights of District residents under the 23rd 
amendment. The House has abundant authority to grant me this right at 
this time.
  Clause 2 of the 23rd amendment gives the House the power to enforce 
the amendment through legislation. My resolution is that legislation. 
The District clause, as this body so often reminds us, gives Members 
full authority over the District of Columbia, and the impeachment 
clause gives Members unilateral authority, or the sole power of 
impeachment.
  The 23rd amendment explicitly treats the District as a State for 
purposes of electing the President and the Vice President.
  I ask for this right in the name of half a million people, the only 
Americans who pay Federal income taxes who do not have full 
representation in the Congress. They are a third per capita in Federal 
income taxes. Their one right that is explicitly mentioned in the 
Constitution is the right to vote for President and Vice President.
  The decision to expel a President from office is as important as the 
decision to elect the President to office. Indeed, the decision to 
expel him is more momentous. There are no partial rights in the 
Constitution. It is unconstitutional and irrational to interpret the 
23rd amendment to afford a vote for President, but no vote on whether 
to impeach a President.
  Let this process begin on a high note of fairness. In the name of the 
half million American citizens who happen to live in the Nation's 
Capital, I ask for the vote in these impeachment proceedings, Mr. 
Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker, today I introduce a resolution affording the District of 
Columbia Delegate a vote in impeachment proceedings. The House is fully 
empowered to enact my resolution under Article I, Sec. 2, clause 5 of 
the Constitution (stating that the ``House of Representatives . . . 
shall have the sole Power of Impeachment''); the Twenty-Third Amendment 
affording the people of the District of Columbia the right to vote for 
President of the United States; and Article I, Sec. 8, clause 17 of the 
Constitution affording Congress plenary power over the District of 
Columbia.
  I am seeking to protect the constitutional right of District 
residents to vote for President by securing a vote in the impeachment 
proceedings only. My resolution is narrowly tailored and would not be a 
grant of voting privileges to the Delegate in other proceedings of the 
House.
  American citizens living in the District of Columbia participated in 
the last two presidential elections by choosing as their electors three 
citizens pledged to President Clinton. Unless Congress acts to remedy 
the situation under the Twenty-Third Amendment, the District population 
will be the only community of American citizens who participated in the 
Presidential elections of 1992 and 1996 who will have no vote at all on 
impeachment or conviction.
  This constitutional asymmetry not only violates the rights of more 
than half a million voters; it is unnecessary. Congress has sufficient 
authority under the District Clause and under the enforcement clause of 
the Twenty-Third Amendment to grant the District of Columbia Delegate 
to the House of Representatives a vote in the House impeachment process 
on the House floor. The Supreme Court has liberally construed 
enforcement clauses in all of the suffrage amendments to vindicate the 
broad and central constitutional purpose of securing equal voting and 
participation rights for all Americans.
  The Twenty-Third Amendment put the District of Columbia essentially 
on the same level as the states for purposes of presidential elections.
  The purpose of Twenty-Third Amendment was to give Congress the power 
to provide the residents of the District an equal role in selecting the 
President and the Vice-President. The Amendment allows District 
residents to participate in presidential elections on an equal footing 
with the states.
  Today, this right can be fully vindicated only by reading the Twenty-
Third Amendment to permit Congress to grant the District of Columbia 
Delegate a vote on the Resolution Impeaching William Jefferson Clinton, 
President of the United States. Otherwise, the political will and 
sovereignty of residents of the District of Columbia in the selection 
of the president will be lost in violation of the Twenty-Third 
Amendment.
  The legislative history of the Twenty-Third Amendment does not 
contradict this conclusion. Apparently because impeachment has been so 
rare, there was no discussion of this problem at the time. This is the 
first occasion that articles of presidential impeachment will go to the 
floor of the House since the Twenty-Third Amendment was added to the 
Constitution in 1961. This is a case of first impression.
  The Twenty-Third Amendment is part of our Constitution's progressive 
inclusion of all ``the governed'' in the processes of government. The 
Fifteenth Amendment secured the right of African-Americans to vote. The 
Nineteenth Amendment extended the right to vote to women. The Twenty-
Fourth Amendment abolished the poll tax. The Twenty-Sixth Amendment 
gave the right to vote to 18-year olds. All of these suffrage 
amendments have been interpreted liberally to secure the inclusion of 
once disenfrachised Americans. As the Supreme Court stated in Reynolds 
v. Sims in 1964: ``history has seen a continuing expansion of the scope 
of the right of suffrage in this country. The right to vote freely for 
the candidate of one's choice is of the essence of a democratic 
society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of 
representative government.'' 337 U.S. 533 (1964)
  This reasoning applies equally to the Twenty-Third Amendment and 
American citizens who happen to live in the nation's capital.
  The case for the Delegate's vote on impeachment would be harder put 
if such participation had to be self-executing. But section 2 provides 
that, ``the Congress shall have power to enforce this article by 
appropriate legislation.'' Since Congress is given the instrumental 
role in activating and enforcing the Twenty-Third Amendment, it may 
interpret that amendment to give the Delegate the right to cast her 
vote along with the representatives of all the other states that 
participated in the presidential electoral college.

  The Supreme Court has clearly treated impeachment as a political 
question solely within legislative competence and control. In Nixon v. 
United States, 506 U.S. 224 (1993), the Court rejected an impeached 
judge's attack on Senate Impeachment Rule XI, under which the presiding 
officer appoints a committee of Senators to ``receive evidence and take 
testimony.'' The Court found that this process of delegating to a 
committee was wholly within the Senate's powers because the Senate has 
``the sole power to try all Impeachments.'' Article I, Section 3, 
Clause 6. The Court found that the ``common sense meaning of the word 
`sole' is that the Senate alone shall have authority to determine 
whether an individual should be acquitted or convicted. . . . If the 
courts may review actions of the Senate in order to determine whether 
that body `tried' an impeached official, it is difficult to see how the 
Senate would be `functioning . . . independently and without assistance 
or interference.' ''
  Just as the Senate has the ``sole power'' to shape and control the 
trial process, the House of Representatives has the ``sole power of 
Impeachment'' in the first instance. Article I, Section 2, Clause 5. As 
the Nixon Court itself pointed out in discussing the nonreviewability 
of the Senate trail, ``the word `sole' appears only one other time in 
the Constitution--with respect to the House of Representatives' sole 
Power of Impeachment.'' Thus, like the Senate, the House of 
Representatives is free to structure the impeachment proceeding 
consistent with its own judgment of constitutional requirements.
  The Delegate's participation on the impeachment articles can thus be 
accomplished by way of a House rule. Article 1, Section 5 of the 
Constitution generally makes ``Each House'' both ``the Judge of the 
Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members'' and the sole 
body to ``determine the Rules of its proceedings.'' As precedent, the 
House unilaterally granted the Delegate from the District of Columbia 
and other Delegates full power to vote in Committee of the Whole 
deliberations, a decision upheld against constitutional attack in 
Michel v. Anderson. This case, too, presents little constitutional 
difficulty because the House is not acting in its bicameral legislative 
capacity but rather in its unilateral capacity to ``have the sole power 
of Impeachment'' under Article 1, Section 2. Thus, the House must be 
able to design and enforce its own rules for conducting the impeachment 
process.
  The Supreme Court has recognized an extremely broad degree of 
interpretive powers under congressional enforcement clauses found in 
the Constitution's suffrage amendments. In Katzenbach versus Morgan it 
upheld the power of Congress, under Section 5 of the Fourteenth 
Amendment, to override a New

[[Page H11773]]

York law and grant the right to vote to all persons who had completed 
the sixth grade in Puerto Rican schools regardless of their inability 
to read or write English. The Court rejected the argument that 
Congress' powers under the enforcement clause were limited only to what 
the Fourteenth Amendment itself required, stating rather that: ``It is 
the power of Congress which has been enlarged. Congress is authorized 
to enforce the prohibitions by appropriate legislation. Some 
legislation is contemplated to make the amendments fully effective.''

  The Court emphasized that Congress was acting to protect voting 
rights and expressed reluctance to interfere with congressional 
judgement in this field. The Court said: ``It was well within 
congressional authority to say that this need of the Puerto Rican 
minority for the vote warranted federal intrusion upon any state 
interests served by the English literacy requirement. It was for 
Congress, as the branch that made this judgement, to assess and weigh 
the various conflicting considerations . . .''
  The Court concluded that any legislation enacted under the 
enforcement clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was permissible so long 
as the enactment `` `is plainly adapted to [the] end' '' of enforcing 
Equal Protection and ``is not prohibited by but is consistent with `the 
letter and spirit of the Constitution','' regardless of whether Equal 
Protection itself dictates such a result.
  Elsewhere, the Court has also found that enforcement clauses give the 
Congress the power to act to vindicate voting interests even where a 
particular statutory result is not constitutionally required. In South 
Carolina versus Katzenbach, the Court upheld Congress' power under 
Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment to enact the Voting Rights Act of 
1965, which included a ban on literacy tests, the requirement that new 
voting rules must be precleared, and the use of federal voting 
examiners. The Court stated that ``Congress has full remedial powers to 
effectuate the constitutional prohibition against racial discrimination 
in voting.'' These powers are defined in these terms: ``Whatever 
legislation is appropriate, that is, adapted to carry out the objects 
the [Reconstruction] amendments have in view, whatever tends to enforce 
submission to the prohibitions they contain, and to secure to all 
persons the enjoyment of perfect equality of civil rights and the equal 
protection of the laws against State denial or invasion, if not 
prohibited, is brought within the domain of congressional power.''

  In Oregon versus Mitchell, the Court unanimously upheld the Voting 
Rights Act Amendments of 1970, which banned literacy tests for five 
years. Using a mere rationality test, the court found that Congress 
could rationally have found that these measures were needed to attack 
the perpetuation of racial discrimination. In City of Rome versus 
United States, the Court upheld Congress' Section 2 power to ban 
electoral changes that are discriminatory in effect intentional 
discrimination in voting. Thus, the Court found that Congress' 
enforcement authority under Section 2 went beyond the strict 
requirements of Section 1. The Court stated that it ``is clear . . . 
that under Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment Congress may prohibit 
practices that in and of themselves do not violate Section 1 of the 
Amendment, so long as the prohibitions attacking racial discrimination 
in voting are `appropriate.' ''
  Because the Twenty-Third Amendment is an attempt to bring voting 
rights to a historically disenfranchised population, its enforcement 
clause should be read in a very broad way consistent with the Court's 
deference to congressional enforcement of suffrage rights. It is also 
relevant that the District Clause, contained in Article 1, Section 8, 
Clause 17 of the Constitution, provides that Congress shall exercise 
``exclusive Legislation in all cases whatsoever over ``the District.'' 
This ``plenary power'' has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to 
give Congress complete authority over the District. There is thus ample 
constitutional basis for Congress having the final authority to define 
the meaning of the Twenty-third amendment, given that this is a 
``case'' involving the District. The courts, at any rate, would, in all 
likelihood, treat this matter as a political question solely within the 
legislative competence, as impeachment is clearly a political question, 
as determined by the Supreme Court in Nixon versus United States, 506 
U.S. 224 (1993).
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Are there other Members who wish to be 
heard?
  The Chair is prepared to rule. The resolution offered by the 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia seeks to provide the Delegate 
from the District of Columbia the right to vote in the House on a 
resolution of impeachment.
  Pursuant to Title II, section 25(a) of the United States Code, the 
Delegate to the House of Representatives from the District of Columbia 
is accorded a seat in the House, with the right of debate but not of 
voting.
  Under rule XII of the rules of the House, the right of a Delegate to 
vote is confined to committee. The Chair will state a basic principle 
on proper questions of privilege as recorded on page 366 of the House 
Rules and Manual.
  A question of the privileges of the House may not be invoked to 
affect a change in the rules or standing orders of the House. Altering 
the right to vote of a delegate is tantamount to a change in the rules 
of the House and is not a proper question of privilege.

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