Movement for Voting Rights Gains Ground, Loses Interest

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 11, 2007

Two congressional committees are scheduled this week to consider a bill giving the District its first full vote in the House, and senior Democrats hope to pass it in the House and send it to the Senate this month.

The voting rights bill would add two seats to the House, one for the heavily Democratic District; the other, an at-large seat for Republican-leaning Utah. It is scheduled to be considered Tuesday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and later in the week by the House Judiciary Committee.

Supporters see the bill as their best chance in decades of securing a congressional vote. The bill has bipartisan support and the backing of the House Democratic leadership. Its prospects in the Senate are uncertain, however, and President Bush has not said whether he would sign it.

Even as the legislation has gained momentum on Capitol Hill, many residents have remained skeptical or indifferent to the issue. Residents clearly like the idea of expanded representation in Congress: A Washington Post poll in 2002 found 86 percent supported it. But there have been few demonstrations or other signs of widespread citizen concern.

"It would be no secret to say it has not caught on in the general public in the city," said Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who, like other D.C. Council members, fully supports voting rights.

"That is the sadness of it all," Evans added. "There are many residents of the city who are unaware -- or, if aware, are not that concerned."

Activists and politicians are urging citizens to join a voting rights march on Congress on April 16, but they have found that igniting enthusiasm for the issue is a challenge.

Just ask Paula Gibbs: When the 20-year-old recently started handing out buttons reading "Taxation Without Representation" to fellow students at the University of the District of Columbia, the reaction was a collective yawn.

"They're like, 'Why are you doing this, Paula? This is so old,' " said Gibbs, who lives with her family in the District's Takoma Park neighborhood.

Activists offer varying theories for the seeming indifference. Some think the public became frustrated after decades of struggle yielded limited results. In 1978, D.C. residents were elated when Congress passed a constitutional amendment giving them voting power in the House and Senate, but their hopes were dashed when only 16 states ratified it.

Another push, in 1993, ended with the House rejecting statehood for the District. The House is expected to pass the current legislation, although an expert at the Congressional Research Service recently said the bill appeared to be unconstitutional. Other legal experts disagree.

"This is such a long-running issue. People get kind of discouraged at times. They don't know whether to come out again or not," said Grace Malakoff, president of the local branch of the League of Women Voters.

Some say D.C. residents have gotten just enough democracy to dull their concern.

"We don't feel the oppression in the way we once did," said Sterling Tucker, a former D.C. Council chairman and leader in the constitutional amendment fight. He was referring to the days before the 1973 Home Rule Act, when a few white congressmen basically ran the majority-black District, and residents couldn't even choose their mayor.

Indeed, the District now has such a high-profile congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), that some residents mistakenly think she is a full congresswoman, activists say. She can vote in committee but can't rise to powerful positions such as committee chairwoman. She lacks members' main source of power: a vote to pass or defeat legislation.

The current voting rights bill reflects a more gradual approach than earlier battles. It does not give the District voting rights in the Senate or make it a state. Some say that incremental approach has dampened enthusiasm for the bill.

"The issue comes down to a vote for Eleanor Holmes Norton versus an issue of full representation," said the Rev. Graylan Hagler, a longtime activist from Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ, a prominent black church in Northeast. "The question is whether people want a half a loaf or a full loaf."

In the past, Norton had supported full D.C. voting rights. But last year, she threw her support behind a bill sponsored by Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) that would provide just the D.C. and Utah House seats. Norton says the District should take what it can get at this point, while keeping fuller representation as an eventual goal. Even a single House vote could strengthen the city's hand in deflecting unwanted congressional interference in its affairs, the bill's supporters say.

That approach has won over much of the local political elite, including Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and the D.C. Council.

It also has been embraced by an advocacy group, DC Vote, which longtime voting rights supporters credit with running a more professional campaign than the grass-roots efforts of the past.

DC Vote, which grew out of a 1998 voting rights lawsuit, has signed up about 70 organizations as partners, ranging from the Washington Teachers Union to the D.C. Chamber of Commerce. It does full-time lobbying and educational work, backed by a million-dollar budget financed largely by local foundations. DC Vote recently attracted several hundred volunteers to Capitol Hill to press for the bill. Its director, a former Clinton administration official named Ilir Zherka, argues that the lack of street mobilization is not that important. Most of the city's past victories in gaining self-governance were the result of high-level politicking, not local grass-roots organizing, he said.

"All those efforts were very much like ours now," he said.

Mike Beard, an activist in the 1970s, said the new movement "is much more politically astute than we were in those days," when vote supporters would gather to toss tea bags in the Tidal Basin.

"We thought, if we could just present the idea, and people knew you didn't have the right to vote in the District of Columbia -- oh, sure, that will happen," Beard recalled.

In the end, he said, "The politics of it was too hard to overcome."