Eric Holder raises issue of D.C. voting rights a day after announcing resignation
U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. made one of his strongest statements in support of D.C. voting rights on Friday in his first appearance after announcing he would step down.
In remarks to the annual legislative conference of the Congressional Black Caucus, Holder vowed that the Justice Department would continue its fight to quash states’ restrictive voter-ID laws and redistricting boundaries that disenfranchise voters.
Near the end of his speech, for the first time in several years he included the District’s lack of voting representation in Congress in that discussion…
Congress takes up bill to make D.C. the 51st state
D.C. residents and city lawmakers packed a Senate hearing Monday for their first chance in two decades to make the case that the nation’s capital should be the 51st state.
They came prepared with statistics: $4 billion in federal income taxes are paid annually by city residents. They came with constitutional theories: D.C. residents are unfairly “subjugated” without a voting member of Congress. And they came with stacks of testimony often built around one word to describe the District’s condition. When it comes to full democracy, the rights of D.C. residents are “denied,” said Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D)…
How the Gun Lobby Shot Down D.C.’s Congressional Vote
When Ilir Zherka took over as executive director of DC Vote in 2002, one of his friends jokingly told him, “Either you’re really smart because you have a job for life—you’re never going to accomplish this goal—or you’re really stupid because you think you can win.”
Perhaps both. But just this spring, he seemed close to proving his cynical compatriot wrong.