4th seat compromise is bad

Jason Chaffetz hasn't even been sworn in yet as Utah's newest member of Congress, and already he has broken ranks with the rest of the delegation. He told this newspaper he will not support a bill that would add a new congressional seat to Utah, as well as one to the District of Columbia.

Even though, on its face, this grand compromise to an age-old problem would help Utah, Chaffetz says he's standing on principle. He also happens to be right.

True, it is embarrassing that the capital city in the most powerful democracy on earth has about 600,000 permanent residents with no representation. But it would be even more embarrassing to ignore the Constitution while granting them representation.

The Constitution expressly says that representatives shall be chosen by "the people of the several states." No matter how some may want to argue that other parts of the Constitution have been interpreted as to include the district among the states (interstate commerce laws apply there, for example), it is clear what the nation's founders intended. The District of Columbia was established as a non-state entity to house the federal government and keep it free from undo political favoritism.

Much has changed over the course of more than 200 years, of course. Federal facilities reside in many states, and there are plenty of local politicians prepared to fight to keep a military base or some other facility, operating in their state regardless of the merits. And yet the Constitution must be respected.

This is a problem that could be solved. We have preferred amending the Constitution to allow the district a voting member of the House of Representatives. This would mirror what was done in 1961 when the 23rd amendment was ratified, granting the district three electoral votes for president.

Chaffetz's solution is to return the district's residential areas to Maryland. There is precedence for this, as well. Part of the original district has been returned to Virginia.

Either solution would respect the rule of law. Injustices cannot simply be remedied with wishes or magic wands, or even through legislation that ends up stuck in the slow mud of litigation.

Utah has been little more than a convenient pawn in this effort from the beginning. The state was denied a fourth representative by the slimmest of margins after the 2000 Census. Proponents of district representation decided that it would be politically palatable to add a seat for Washington and one for Utah at the same time, thus countering what certainly would be a Democratic seat in the district with an almost certain Republican one in the Beehive State.