How the D.C.-Utah House Voting Rights Act violates the Constitution.

By Hans A. von Spakovsky

When the D.C. voting-rights bill comes up for a cloture vote in the Senate this Tuesday, senators will face one overriding question: Will they uphold their oaths to support and defend the Constitution? If they give the District of Columbia a voting representative in Congress, they will break those oaths.

Article I specifies that “Representatives . . . shall be apportioned among the several States,” and this is confirmed in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment. One of the qualifications to be a congressman is to “be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.”

Congress itself has recognized that the only way the District of Columbia could get representation was through a constitutional amendment — Congress passed one in 1977 (the amendment failed to gain the approval of 38 states, and thus didn’t take effect).

It also took an amendment — the 23rd Amendment, ratified in 1961 — to provide District residents the right to.... more.