WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia moved a step closer Thursday to gaining full membership in the House of Representatives, as the Senate voted 61-37 to give the nation’s capital and Utah each a House seat.
Thursday’s historic vote will be followed by a vote next week in the House, where a similar bill is expected to pass easily. President Barack Obama has expressed support for Washington voting rights and is expected to sign the bill once it reaches his desk.
Residents and officials of the District of Columbia — a 61-square-mile area with a population of almost 600,000, about 55 percent of it black — have engaged in a long, slow fight for representation in Congress.
However, the action still faces obstacles. It almost surely will face a court challenge from opponents who believe that the Constitution restricts voting representation to states, which the District of Columbia is not.
A House committee oversees Washington, which has been a source of irritation at times for residents. They complain that Congress — particularly during Republican control — has used Washington as a test laboratory for issues ranging from school vouchers to pushing the courts to roll back local gun-control laws.
“Citizens have felt that they are treated as second-class citizens in this country,” said Ronald Walters, a University of Maryland political science professor. “They’ve been treated as a stepchild or guinea pigs for political experiments or pet ideas of members of Congress who wouldn’t do it in their districts.”
Washington residents gained the right to vote for president after a 1961 constitutional amendment gave the city three electoral votes. In 1971, Congress granted Washington a nonvoting member in the House.
Two years later, Congress approved the Home Rule Act, which allowed Washington residents to elect a mayor and 13 City Council members.
In the current bill, a seat for heavily Republican Utah, which barely missed getting a fourth House seat in the 2000 census, was added to strike a political balance.
