D.C. Voting Rights Go Back in the Dead Letter Bin

The DC Voting Rights Bill that was expected to reach the House this week has been pulled from this session’s legislative calendar entirely, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told The Washington Post yesterday.

Tensions between Congress and the District’s City Council have been rising ever since the Senate’s version of the DC Voting Rights Act passed with a dubious amendment that, if enacted, would override all of the city’s efforts to enforce gun control policies. After blockading the bill in the House for a year, D.C.’s nonvoting representative, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, said in a statement last week that she and the City Council would reluctantly endorse the bill — conceding defeat to the gun lobby, Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats in order to finally secure a vote for DC’s residents. The District has been unrepresented in Congress since the city was established as a federal territory in 1801.

But Norton said she and Democratic leadership were “shocked” to learn the gun lobby now wants even stronger language in the House version of the bill. “The existing Senate gun bill eliminated important gun safety laws in the District, but the changes in the House gun bill would directly proliferate guns throughout the District,” Norton said in a statement yesterday.

Among the changes proposed by Reps. Mark Sounder (R-Ind.) and Travis Childers (D-Miss.) — changes Norton calls “NRA-drafted” — are measures that would greatly diminish the D.C. police chief’s right to deny concealed-carry licenses and that would potentially allow semiautomatic weapons in schools and other buildings that don’t have elaborate security measures, like metal detectors and biometric screening devices in place to identify those with criminal intent.

D.C. councilmembers were preparing to take up a resolution vowing not to adopt the gun-law changes if the bill passed. They weren’t alone in their distaste for the bill. While the NAACP, the AFL-CIO and the National Urban League supported Holmes’ strategy of getting legislation through the House and then changing the language, the gun amendment prompted the League of Women Voters and DC for Democracy to hold off on supporting the legislation.

Norton says she’s nonetheless hopeful that a DC Voting Rights Act will one day become law: “I am full of promising ideas about how to move forward not only on voting rights but on every right D.C. residents are entitled to as American citizens.” An optimistic thought, but with congressional redistricting based on results of the 2010 Census and upcoming midterm elections, the Democrats aren’t assured the majority in both Houses that they’re enjoying now. After years of political battles with no end in sight, it’s hard to say where it will go from here.

Photo credit: dbking.