It has been called the great unfinished work of the Founding Fathers — deciding what to do about voting rights in the District of Columbia. And now Utah has suddenly found its way into the middle of it.

But like so much of politics these days, a cutthroat, all-or-nothing approach is going to kill what could be a grand compromise. With a little movement from both sides, a couple of problems easily could be solved.

A Republican congressman from Virginia, Thomas M. Davis III, has introduced a bill that would give Utah an additional seat in the House right now, in the middle of a decade, as well as one to the District of Columbia, whose representation has been the source of debate for more than two centuries now.

Why Utah? Because we were edged out of a fourth seat in the 2000 Census by less than 900 people — something state leaders here took all the way to the Supreme Court and lost because of a principle called "hot deck imputation." North Carolina got our seat, instead, leading the Morning Star in Wilmington to lapse into a momentary fit of giddiness. "Applied to canine residences," the paper giggled, ". . . the technique would be 'hot dog imputation.' "

Now the ones exclaiming "hot dog!" are Utah Republicans, who are no doubt salivating over the chance to add perhaps two more Republicans to the state's congressional delegation. Why two? Because adding an extra seat likely would require Utah to redraw its districts again in the middle of a decade, giving the GOP one more shot at forcing Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson out of office.

But their glee has become a stumbling block. Democrats ought to be thrilled at the chance to get a D.C. representative who most assuredly would represent their party. But they're leery of Utah's plans to parlay one more GOP seat into two.

On the other side of the equation, some of the people in Washington who have been banging the drums for statehood won't support the bill because they can't bring themselves to take only one step in the right direction. They want it all, now.

It didn't help matters when Gail Dixon, who belongs to the D.C. Statehood Green Party, used the race card in the Washington Times. "I'm old enough to remember when (whites) told black folks that you had to wait to use the water fountain after they let you walk on the same side of the sidewalk," she told the paper. "That's increments."

Later, when confronted with the argument that Washington is too small to be a state, she said, "Look at Connecticut or Rhode Island: They're as big as a postage stamp."

Well, this kind of talk isn't going to get anyone anywhere.

Just to be clear, the case for Washington statehood is weak. The District of Columbia's population, according to the Census Bureau's 2003 estimate, is 563,384, which is 1.5 percent less than it was in 2000. The long-term forecast is for continued population loss. Connecticut, meanwhile, has 3.5 million people and is growing. Rhode Island has 1.1 million people and is growing.