Death of 4th seat is good

The Senate's failure to move ahead with the grand compromise to add congressional representatives to both Utah and the District of Columbia is no catastrophe for the Beehive State. Rather, it is a victory for the Constitution and for common sense.

We understand the issues involved, and we are sympathetic to the cause. The District of Columbia, whose shrinking population still includes about 600,000 people, deserves full-fledged representation in the House. It's ridiculous, not to mention an embarrassment, for the residents of the capital city in the world's foremost democracy to have no say in how the nation is governed.

But it would be just as embarrassing to ignore the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, in order to grant that representation. The Senate fell three votes shy of moving the bill on for consideration Tuesday, and that was primarily for this reason.

Argue all you want about how Washington has become something the Founders did not expect — a large city with hundreds of thousands of permanent residents. The fact remains that the Constitution says representatives shall be chosen by "the people of the several states." The district is not a state.

The remedy for this is to pass a constitutional amendment. Precedent for this was set when Congress and the states passed the 23rd Amendment to grant Washington three electoral votes in presidential elections.

True, passing an amendment to allow the district a representative would bog down in politics, mainly because Washington surely would elect a Democrat. That appears to be what happened 30 years ago when an attempt failed. This is unfortunate, but it doesn't change the procedures necessary.

Utah always had less to gain in this compromise than did Washington. The state was a useful pawn because it came just short of obtaining a fourth representative in the last Census and because it likely would elect a Republican to its fourth seat. The bill would have added two seats to the now 435-member House, with some question as to whether the House later would be squeezed back to its former size after the next Census.

The truth is Utah, one of the nation's fastest growing states, is almost assured of receiving a fourth seat anyway after the 2010 Census, and that seat will not be diluted by the addition of two more overall House seats.

Had this bill passed the Senate (a version already has passed the House), it would have been either vetoed by the president or bogged down by legal challenges.

Rest assured, the issue is not dead. Supporters have vowed to try again next year. But every tick of the clock makes the compromise even less relevant to Utah. A constitutional amendment may be a messy and lengthy process, but it is the only way to solve this problem.