Voting Rights Chicanery

"The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states . . . ."

-- Constitution of the United

States, Article I, Section 2

"What's the Constitution between friends?"

-- Rep. Timothy Campbell, a Tammany Democrat, to Democratic President Grover Cleveland after Cleveland said that a bill Campbell favored was unconstitutional.

There they go again. House Democrats should at least provide variety in their venality. On Wednesday, fresh from legislating new ethics regarding relations with lobbyists, they demonstrated that there are worse forms of corruption than those involving martinis and money.

They again voted to give the delegates to the House from Guam, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia, and the resident commissioner from Puerto Rico, the right to vote in the House when it is sitting as the Committee of the Whole, which is how it sits almost all the time. It is in that status that almost all debate about and amending of legislation occurs.

If these five votes decide the outcome of a vote in the Committee of the Whole, the matter at issue will be automatically revoted by the full House without those five participating. Still, these five faux members will have powers equal to those of real members on everything but final passage of bills, which often is more perfunctory than the process that leads to that. Almost always, all five delegates are Democrats. (Puerto Rico's current resident commissioner is the first Republican in 100 years.)