District of Columbia Voting Rights Restoration Act

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA VOTING RIGHTS RESTORATION ACT -- (House of Representatives - January 20, 2004)

(Mr. ROHRABACHER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks and include therein extraneous material.)

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I have just introduced the District of Columbia Voting Rights Restoration Act, a bill to restore full and equal congressional voting rights, including representation in the United States Senate, for the residents of the District of Columbia.

My bill would restore the Federal rights of Maryland citizenship that were taken away from the District of Columbia residents over 200 years ago by an Act of Congress, the Organic Act of 1801. Enactment of my bill would mean that D.C. residents would once again have the full Federal voting rights they enjoyed as Maryland citizens prior to Congress' assumption of exclusive legislative authority over the District of Columbia. Those rights included the right to vote for and to be elected as and to serve as U.S. senators, U.S. representatives and presidential electors from Maryland.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues on both sides of the aisle not to let small national political considerations stop us from restoring these rights, and I would also insert the questions and answers about my bill that I am putting on the desk today as part of the RECORD.

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Mr. Speaker, it is time for all Members of Congress, whether Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, to heed the legitimate complaints of "taxation without representation." We must correct this 200-year-old injustice to the U.S. citizens who live in our nation's capital. The debate must no longer be about whether D.C. residents should have full voting rights in Congress, but how to accomplish a goal that we all share.

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Question. Since the VRRA includes D.C. as part of the Maryland delegation in the U.S. House, what is to keep the Maryland legislature from splitting D.C. and joining it with two or more Maryland congressional districts?

Answer. The VRRA would require that whenever D.C. has fewer people than the average Maryland congressional district, D.C. be kept intact in a single congressional district, with contiguous territory from adjacent Maryland counties added as necessary to produce a district equal in population to the other Maryland districts. The VRRA also provides that whenever D.C.'s population is equal to or larger than the average Maryland district, then there must be at lease one district that is 100% D.C.

The controlling Supreme Court opinion in Oregon v. Mitchell (the 18-year-old vote case) made clear that Congress has the power to regulate congressional redistricting by state legislatures. Congress has exercised this power in prohibiting at-large districts in states with more than one House member. In this case, Congress would protect D.C. from unfair treatment because D.C. residents would have no voice in the Maryland legislature.

Question. Does the Constitution allow D.C. residents who do not actually live in Maryland to choose the representatives of that state? If it were constitutional to treat D.C. residents as if they were residents of the state of Maryland for the purposes of voting, would D.C. residents be constitutionally precluded from representing the new Maryland district, given the language of Article I specifically requiring that representatives be inhabitants of the state in which they are chosen?

Answer. In addition to restoring congressional voting rights, the VRRA also restores Maryland citizenship rights to be a candidate for, and to serve as, U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and presidential elector from Maryland.

D.C. is one of several federal enclaves in which the residents were not considered to be "inhabitants" of the states that ceded such enclaves to the federal government. There is no reason why Congress is any more powerless to restore the right of D.C. residents to be considered inhabitants of Maryland for federal electoral purposes than it was powerless to restore the rights of residents of other federal enclaves to be considered an inhabitant of the states, including Maryland, that ceded their place of residence to the federal government.

Question. Because representation in the Electoral College is based on the number of Senators and Representatives in the states, wouldn't Maryland receive only one more electoral vote to correspond with the new district? If so, and the District's three reliably Democratic electoral votes were eliminated, wouldn't the result be to tilt the votes in the Electoral College in favor of a Republican presidential candidate?

Answer. The VRRA add one electoral vote to Mayland's total, and would eliminate D.C.'s current three electoral votes to eliminate double counting. Depending on how Maryland and D.C. vote, that would result in either a net pickup of 8 or a net loss of 2 electoral votes for Democrats, with a small possibility of changing the result one way or the other. It's also possible that the D.C. votes for Members of Congress provided by VRRA could swing control of the House and Senate to the Democrats. The small risks involved for each political party are a reasonable tradeoff for correcting the 200-year-old injustice of depriving D.C. residents of congressional representation.

Question. Shouldn't a bill creating two new House seats for D.C. and Utah have a clause that the bill is not severable, meaning if the D.C. portion of the bill were found to be unconstitutional, the Utah portion also would fall?

Answer. Yes; the VRRA has such a non-severability clause.

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