Norton to Force House Vote on D.C. Voting Rights, Tuesday
WASHINGTON, D.C. –Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) will force the first substantive vote in the House in the 114th Congress on Tuesday, January 6, 2014, at approximately 1:45 p.m., on the District of Columbia's ability to vote in the Committee of the Whole on the House floor. The motion Norton will offer, as required by the House, seeks to prevent the Republican majority from voting on the rules for the new Congress, which strip Norton of her vote in the Committee of the Whole, until a special committee has studied the issue or the delegate vote is again added to the Rules. The motion will be offered immediately before Members begin debate on the Rules resolution, interrupting the process before it begins. The vote will take place after the Speaker and Minority Leader address the chamber.
Norton first secured a vote for D.C. in the Committee of the Whole on the House floor during the 103rd Congress, when Democrats were in the majority. Shortly after becoming a Member of the House, she proposed the Committee of the Whole vote in a legal memorandum to House Democratic leaders, who, after vetting it with outside counsel, agreed that the vote was constitutional. A federal district court and a federal appeals court upheld its constitutionality after Republicans challenged the vote in court. However, the delegate vote was eliminated in the Committee of the Whole when House Republicans regained the majority in the 104th Congress. In the 110th and 11th Congresses, when Democrats were in control, Norton sought and got the return of her vote. When House Republicans won control of the House in the 112th and the 113th Congresses they again stripped D.C. residents of their vote as they are seeking to do again this year.
Norton said, "Ironically, Republicans offered the equivalent motion I will offer tomorrow when Democrats first gave me the vote in the Committee of the Whole, but their language sought to eliminate that vote, just as I am now seeking to return it. I am turning the tables, using almost the same language to get D.C. its delegate vote. The District has an advantage our Republican opponents did not have, however—the federal appeals court decision holding that the delegate vote in the Committee of the Whole is in fact constitutional, Michel v. Anderson (14 F.3d 623 (D.C. Cir. 1994). With this motion, we formally begin the protest that will be necessary to salvage what D.C. has won in the past as we move toward full equality. We will need the help of the top elected District officials and District residents, because the attack on the court-sanctioned delegate vote is likely to be only the first attack on our rights by the new Congress."
In December, Norton sent a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-TX) requesting that the House rules for the 114th Congress permit the District of Columbia delegate to vote on the House floor in the Committee of the Whole House.