Huntsman urges House panel to back additional seat for Utah

WASHINGTON — Utah has been one voice short in Congress for the past six years, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. told members of a House subcommittee Thursday as he urged them to support a bill that would grant the state an additional seat in the House of Representatives.

The pending bill permits a House vote for the District of Columbia and creates an at-large seat for Utah until the 2010 Census is completed. The bill's authors had wanted representation for the District and gained support for the measure from Republican lawmakers by adding the provision for an additional seat for Utah, which would more than likely add a Republican seat to balance out the District's almost certain Democratic vote.

While Huntsman expressed his support for the bill, constitutional experts at the hearing had problems with the bill, saying Congress cannot just create a new voting position in the House.

The majority of the witnesses' problems revolved about the District's vote. No one maintained that the District's residents should remain without a vote in Congress, but they disagreed with the means of getting the vote to them.

"The central premise that Congress can, by simple legislation, create a representative for the District is wrong," said John C. Fortier of the American Enterprise Institute. "The Constitution, not Congress, has determined that the House and Senate will be made up of representatives of states and states alone. Congress can no more change the Constitution on this matter by simple legislation than it could repeal the First Amendment or allow 16-year-olds to serve as president."

Fortier said the only way to truly grant voting rights to the District would be to admit it as a state, to make the District part of Maryland or to amend the Constitution to allow the District to retain its current status but also grant it representation in Congress.

The bill "has its heart in the right place, but it will not pass constitutional muster," Fortier said. "It too easily glosses over the numerous textual references in the Constitution that grant representation only to the people of states."

But the at-large element of the additional seat for Utah also would be problematic, according to Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.

Turley said the at-large seat would add an additional representative of each resident of Utah, allowing them more representation than the people of the other states.