Plan gives D.C., Utah new power

WASHINGTON — You can pardon the residents of the nation's capital who are feeling a little tweaked at Sunday's election in Iraq.

After all, at the same time Iraqis will be installing a representative form of government, residents in Washington, D.C., still do not have a voting representative in Congress. They never have.

But a plan in the works by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., and to be co-sponsored by Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, would give the District of Columbia a vote in the House, but only in exchange for a fourth House seat in Utah.

"I still think Utah got screwed over, shortchanged if you will, in the last census count," Bishop said. "We were a few hundred people short (of the fourth seat) and the Census Bureau wouldn't count about 20,000 Mormon missionaries from Utah."

Through the apportionment process — and after a losing legal battle where errors in census counts were deemed not enough to change the results — Utah lost the seat to North Carolina, which picked up its 13th seat.

Under Davis' plan, Utah would get its fourth seat. And given the state is so overwhelmingly Republican, it would probably mean another Republican vote.

The District of Columbia, which has an elected delegate who cannot vote on the floor, would get a voting member of the House. The District, which elected Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton as its delegate, is roughly 90 percent Democratic.

The change would add two seats temporarily to the 435-member House. Under the proposal, the seats would be reapportioned in 2012, and the formula would revert to having 435 members in the House divided among the states and the District of Columbia by population.

"No one gets hurt," he said. "D.C. wins, we win."

"I think all of us would love to have a fourth seat here instead of three," said Rep. Jim Matheson, the only Democrat in the delegation. "But I don't know that it helps or hurts to tie it to D.C. voting rights."

D.C. voting rights have a long history of debate, usually centered around whether to give Democrats another vote. But the bigger picture, Matheson said, is that "it's pretty remarkable that there are citizens of this country who do not have representation in Congress."

Matheson supports the legislation but has no idea how his Democratic colleagues will react to the Utah caveat. But he points out that the 2010 census will inevitably give Utah a fourth seat in Congress anyway, so it might not be a deal-buster. Bishop thinks Utah could even add a fifth seat by that time, given current population trends.