This editorial appeared in both the New York Times and Inside Bay Area on 24 March 2007. It has long been an antidemocratic feature of the USA that citizens of the city of Washington DC must pay taxes but have no representation. They cannot elect a congressman. The injustice is made more severe because the US congress is in many ways effectively the city government of Washington DC as well as the Federal government. The Republican Party currently is motivated to block any measure that would redress this wrong because they believe that enfranchising DC residents would likely generate more Democratic than Republican votes. Here, in the latest move in this long-running farce, the Republicans succeeded in blocking a DC-enfranchising measure with the aid of a "poison pill" involving gun control laws. Poison pills are a device which works only because of the presence of Condorcet cycles.
IN A sleazy political stroke, Republicans played the gun lobby's card Thursday as the House was on the verge of redressing one of the longest-running injustices of American democracy: the denial of a congressional vote to the taxpayers of the District of Columbia. The historic proposal for full representation in the House was derailed by a GOP motion to attach a ban on Washington's legitimate attempts to outlaw firearms in the city limits. Democratic leaders had to retract the bill and promise to prevail later without such a poison pill.
The D.C. voting rights bill is not perfect, rooted in a political deal that awarded Republican Utah a fourth House seat in exchange for creating a full-fledged House seat for the heavily Democratic District. But the measure has the moral edge in rescuing D.C.'s citizens from a political limbo dating back to post-Revolutionary concerns about theoretical mob demonstrations at the seat of government. Now their sons and daughters are among those fighting and dying in behalf of that government's policy of spreading democracy abroad.
The House upset followed a last-minute statement of opposition from the Bush administration — ever the sensitive defender of the Constitution. Rep. Tom Davis, the Virginia Republican who conceived the pragmatic measure, fought hard. But the injection of the powerful gun lobby's interests split the coalition behind the D.C. bill.
The procedural torpedoing is only the latest insult in the city's long history as a congressional vassal. Not until 1964 were residents allowed to vote for president, and the home rule election of a city government wasn't permitted until nine years later. The District now has an absurd shadow presence in the House, with the elected delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, allowed a say only in committee, but no vote on the floor. After so many years of subjecting D.C. to its whims and special interest politics, Congress must finally right this historical wrong.