Theoretically, the law, if passed this year, would take effect in the next election in 2006, and Bishop believes the decision would be left up to the Utah Legislature to decide how to divide the state among four districts. Because it is a temporary seat, it could even be left as an at-large district, he suggested.

After the last census, when it appeared Utah's challenge might win in court, state lawmakers drew up a four-district plan. That plan could be revived, although Bishop said it would need some modifications.

"It would be the right thing to let the Legislature decide that," Bishop said.

Democrats are not too excited about giving Republicans a near-certain seat in Utah, nor are Republicans inclined to give District residents a Democratic vote in the House, where the GOP has a slim majority.

"This is a strategy. We need to build bridges — not attack people," Davis said. "Politics is ultimately a game of addition, not subtraction."

Bishop, a former U.S. government and history teacher, said the Founding Fathers could never have envisioned the nation's capital as it is today as one of the nation's largest urban areas.

At the time it was created at the nation's birth, it was a 10-square-mile, mostly uninhabited reserve straddling the Potomac River in Maryland and Virginia where a small number of federal loyalists would live, but whose focus would be to the federal government rather than any particular state.

A dispute over a canal on the Maryland side of the river in the early 1800s prompted Arlington and Alexandria to de-annex from the District, leaving only the Maryland side as part of D.C. Since so few people lived on the Virginia side, no one really complained at the time.

"The easiest thing to do would be to make (the District) part of Maryland," Bishop said. "But that isn't going to happen."

There is plenty of public support for the idea that D.C. residents should have a representative vote in Congress. According to a KRC Research poll cited by The Associated Press, 82 percent of Americans believe D.C. residents should have equal voting rights in Congress.

Does that mean Congress is listening?

"If it was anybody other than Tom Davis I would give it no chance whatsoever," Bishop said. "But I have learned never to count him out. He really can get things accomplished."

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Contributing: Associated Press

E-mail: spang@desnews.com