[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 1]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 644-645]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 ON THE INTRODUCTION OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA FAIR AND EQUAL HOUSE 
                       VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 2007

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, January 9, 2007

  Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, today Government Reform Committee Ranking 
Member Tom Davis (R-VA) and I keep our promise to reintroduce the Fair 
and Equal House Voting Rights Act as our first bill of the 110th 
Congress. Republican Davis was the chair of the Committee when we 
worked together for 4 years to get Republican and Democratic agreement 
on this bill to give one voting representative to the mainly Democratic 
District of Columbia and another to the largely Republican State of 
Utah. The idea arose after Utah narrowly missed getting a seat 
following the last census and later failed to get the Supreme Court to 
rule in the State's favor. The bill also would permanently increase the 
size of the House of Representatives from 435 to 437 members. I want to 
thank my colleague Tom Davis, the original author of the bill, for his 
indispensable persistence, and for his bipartisan spirit that afforded 
me every opportunity to significantly contribute to the bill during the 
109th Congress, when he was in the Republican majority and I was a 
minority member.
  Democrats have long been outspoken in their commitment to D.C. voting 
rights, and I appreciate their unwavering support. The bill we 
introduce today reflects the political history of our country that 
inalterably demonstrates that additional representation has been 
granted only on the basis of exact political equivalence, assuring 
neither benefit nor disadvantage to either party. This bill meets the 
necessary standard. Party, of course, should not matter when it comes 
to a democratic right as basic as representation in the legislature 
that taxes citizens and sends them to war. However, it is the 
undeniable reality that party equivalence in one form or another has 
driven decisions for adding voting representation. Many remember the 
most recent additions of Alaska and Hawaii, when these States entered 
the union because their voting records eliminated party advantage. 
However, this pattern was set throughout the nineteenth century as each 
State entered the union, most dramatically, of course, when no slave 
State could be admitted unless a free State came in at the same time.
  Preserving all their rights as American citizens to voting rights in 
each house, the people of the District of Columbia and our civil rights 
and civic allies have nevertheless concluded that there can be no 
serious attempt to achieve the vote for our citizens that ignores 
precedents woven so tightly into our history. The linchpin of this 
legislation is its bipartisan balance, and we are grateful for the rare 
opportunity we believe will not come again soon, but that the Utah-D.C. 
bill offers District citizens now, to follow the unerring path to the 
vote laid out by American history.
  A similar bill approved by the Committee on Government Reform last 
May called for the additional seat in Utah to be at-large until the 
2010 census, but when the bill was referred to the Judiciary Committee, 
then-chairman James F. Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-WI) insisted that Utah 
adopt a redistricting plan that allowed for four seats before he would 
approve the bill. The Utah's legislature met in early December and 
quickly adopted a four-seat plan, which is provided for in today's 
bill. However, House leadership declined to address the issue in the 
closing days of the 109th Congress. We now seek our seat to vote in the 
110th Congress.
  Although we came close to securing passage in the 109th Congress, the 
District's vote was already long past due. We're in overtime in the 
110th. We will proceed based on the same win-win approach that carried 
us through last Congress. In the spirit of the partnership promised by 
the new Democratic House majority, I am optimistic that Democrats will 
see the bill as a historic opportunity to make good on promises for 
voting rights and equality for the people of the District of Columbia.
  Finally, I ask to be forgiven a personal allusion. Throughout this 
process, I have never referred to the District's vote as my vote or to 
what the vote would mean to me personally because the vote will not 
belong to me. I have

[[Page 645]]

never mentioned the special reason I personally wanted to be the first 
to cast the vote because the Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act is 
for D.C. residents now and in the future, not for me. However, my 16 
years in Congress has been defined by the search for a way to achieve 
full representation for the city where my family has lived since before 
the Civil War. That search has included the two-day debate followed by 
a vote on statehood more than 10 years ago that Speaker Tom Foley 
afforded me, and the vote I subsequently won in the Committee of the 
Whole because of the long commitment of the Democratic majority to D.C. 
voting rights and the commitment of my party to maximize the rights of 
the citizens who live in the Nation's capital until voting rights could 
be achieved. The struggle has been driven by its own terms, by the here 
and now, by the residents of the District of Columbia for over 200 
years. Yet, I cannot deny the personal side of this quest, epitomized 
by my family of native Washingtonians, my father Coleman Holmes, my 
grandfather, Richard Holmes, who entered the D.C. Fire Department in 
1902 and whose picture hangs in my office, a gift from the D.C. Fire 
Department, and especially my great-grandfather, Richard Holmes, a 
slave who walked off a Virginia plantation in the 1850s, made it to 
Washington, and began our family here. I cannot help but think today of 
this man I never knew, a slave in the District until Lincoln freed the 
slaves here 9 months before the Emancipation Proclamation. I am mindful 
of my great grandfather, who came here in a furtive search for freedom 
itself, not the vote in Congress. I wonder what a man who lived as a 
slave in the District, and others like him would think if he could know 
that his great-granddaughter might be the first to cast the first full 
vote for the District of Columbia in the House of Representatives. I 
hope to have the special honor of casting the vote I have sought for 16 
years. I want to cast that vote for the citizens of this city, whom I 
have had the great privilege of representing, who have fought with me 
every step of the way, and who have waited interminably for justice. 
Yes, and I want to cast that vote in memory of my great-grandfather, 
Richard Holmes.

                          ____________________