After two centuries, D.C. residents may get vote

[ccharles000]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29352171/

WASHINGTON - Call the nation's capital home, and for some 200 years you have paid taxes and gone to war for your country but you didn't get a vote in Congress.

Residents of the District of Columbia have chafed over their second-class status, and for nearly a decade many have displayed "taxation without representation" license plates on their cars to signal their outrage.

All that could change with key votes this week in the Senate.

Debate opened Monday on a bill to give the 600,000 people of Washington D.C. a full vote in the House. A new Democratic president, Barack Obama, and heftier Democratic majorities in Congress have improved the prospects for the decades-long effort that would certainly ensure another Democrat lawmaker in Congress.

Democrats outnumber Republicans by some 4-to-1 in the capital.

In a bit of horsetrading to offset the Democratic pickup, the bill would award a fourth House seat to Republican-leaning Utah, which narrowly missed getting that extra seat after the 2000 national census. With the two new seats, the House would have 437 representatives.

The time is ripe, said Ilir Zherka, executive director of the advocacy group DC Vote, to end a situation where "we are the only capital of a democracy on the planet that denies voting representation in the national legislature."

[JCMach1]

1. How about 2 Senators then?