http://www.msnbc.com/id/29362689
http://www.time.com/politics/article/0,8599,1881791,00.html
This week in Washington, the senate passed a vote 62-34 to allow talks to increase the house to 437 members, and in doing so giving a seat in the house to the democratic District of Columbia. The other seat would be given to Republican Utah giving it it's 4th seat until 2012 when the next redistribution of seats would occur. D.C. has had a non-voting delegate (currently Eleanor Holmes Norton) in the House since 1971 in which allows the delegate to vote on committees but not on bills. The major argument against D.C. the idea is that D.C. is just that, a district, and the constitution clearly states that representatives are chosen by people of states, not districts. However, D.C. in most all other aspects behaves as a state. It's citizens can be drafted for war, it's commerce is controlled by the government and it pays federal taxes. In protest of the last issue the people of D.C. even have put "Taxation without Representation" on the license plate to show that they are not represented in congress.
D.C. has been fighting for voting rights since 1801 when they were no longer allowed to vote in the neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia. The 23rd amendment which was ratified in 1963 gave the district of nearly 600,000 people the right to vote in presidential elections.
If passed in the Senate, the bill will go to the House for ratification and then to President Obama who is said to support the bill. However, it will probably go through several revisions before that happens and it will probably face a large republican opposition in both the House and the Senate.
