Norton Support of D.C. House Vote Bill

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) and Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) culminated their efforts of almost four years with an announcement of an agreement they reached almost two months ago on the D.C. Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act of 2006. The bill, which was then shared with the relevant Democratic and Republican Members, is the first with good indicators for passage, including mark-ups in two committees and the required elements, “the essential metric [for] both parties…no partisan gain and no partisan disadvantage,” according to Norton. She said that the pattern of party equivalence was set in the nineteenth century and has been dominant throughout U.S. history, notwithstanding “a democratic right as basic as representation in the legislature that taxes your citizens and sends them to war.”