District of Columbia: "The Conservative Case for D.C. Voting Rights"
Marc Fisher writes in the Washington Post: Just as D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty cheered voting rights advocates with a new effort to lobby Congress for the right that all other Americans take for granted, and just as congressional Democrats were gearing up to show that they intend to be more aggressive on D.C. voting rights than the Republican leadership had been, along comes the Congressional Research Service with a whole new barrier.
The non-partisan Research Service concluded that giving D.C. residents a full, voting seat in the House of Representatives is probably unconstitutional. Suddenly, the air seemed to escape from the voting rights balloon.
Now, D.C. voting rights advocates are scrambling to reassert Congress's authority to create a House seat for the District. On the theory that the Democrats have more to gain from a D.C. seat than the Republicans, the new lobbying effort is aimed at persuading Republicans that this is not only the right thing to do, but a legally well-founded path as well. And who better to make that case than two solid citizens of the right, conservative legal scholars Kenneth Starr, the former Clinton impeachment case special prosecutor, and Viet Dinh, the Georgetown law professor and former Justice Department official.
Starr notes that the Constitution is silent on the matter of whether D.C. residents may vote. In the Founders' era, there was no expectation that people would live in the capital, which was then little more than an idea surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. But Starr says despite that silence, Congress has the authority to adapt to the fact that a full-fledged city grew up here; the Constitution expressly says that "The Congress shall have power ... to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever" over the District of Columbia. -- The Conservative Case for D.C. Voting Rights - Raw Fisher