Representin' and Keepin' it Real
Utah Bloggers Lash Out at Plans to Give D.C. Representation in the House
By Tracy Medley, 11-14-06
It looks like Utah will be getting its fourth Congressional seat, but don’t expect any satisfaction from Utah’s conservative set. Soon to be Speaker of the House and Democrat Nancy Pelosi expressed support for Utah’s fourth seat once it was determined to be a statewide position and not one that would gerrymander, er…redistrict Utah in a way that would cost Jim Matheson his seat. But for some, Speaker-elect Pelosi’s goodwill toward Utah is negated by her desire to give full Congressional voting rights to liberal-leaning Washington D.C.
Critics who can't help seeing nefarious underpinnings in the plan, argue that adding a House seat for Washington D.C. would cancel out any gain that Utah would achieve with its additional seat. The biggest complaint appears to be that Washinton D.C. is not a state and therefore does not deserve full rights in the House. Utah State Rep. Craig Frank flayed the plan on his blog. “THEY (???) want us to believe that by granting little ol’ Utah another seat at the big kids’ table we (all political players here in Utah and back in D.C.) would be will to casually glance away for just a moment and conveniently disremember that WAHINGTON D.C. IS NOT A STATE!”
Frank Staheli of the Utah political blog, Economics, Politics, and Current Events echoed the sentiments of Rep. Frank “Not only is it a requirement that the person elected to the House of Representatives be an inhabitant of the state for which he is being elected; it is also a requirement that the electors of that state participate in the election. The District of Columbia is not a state,” he wrote.
Staheli and Frank seem hung up on a particular line in the Constitution’s Article 1, Section 2, “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.”
Regrettably, it’s difficult not to see this type of hair-splitting as sour grapes. It's true, Washington D.C. is not a state; but there are citizens who live there and they deserve representation. Are we really to believe that the Framers intended to exclude anyone from representation in the House? Although specific words of the Constitution are up for interpretation and quibbling, the spirit of the Constitution is indubitable.
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