Washington DC

September 18, 2007 -- WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) today made the following statement on the failed Senate vote on voting rights for the District of Columbia. The vote to proceed to consideration of the bill failed to reach the necessary 60 votes.    » read more »

(As Prepared for Delivery)

September 18, 2007 -- "Today’s debate involves one of the most important issues in our democracy. Dr. Martin Luther King called the right to vote “civil right number one.” Yet hundreds of thousands of Americans who live in the nation’s capital have been denied an equal voice in our democracy. Citizens in the District of Columbia live in the very shadow of the Capitol Building, but they have no representative who can vote their interests within these halls. It’s long past time for us to finally correct this basic wrong.    » read more »

September 18, 2007 -- Washington, DC — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made the following statement today after the Senate Republicans blocked a debate on the D.C. Voting Rights Act:

“By blocking a debate in the Senate on D.C. voting rights, Republicans have continued to deny 600,000 U.S. citizens the right to voting representation in Congress.    » read more »

September 18, 2007 -- Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today voted in support of providing the District of Columbia with a vote in the House of Representatives.

Senator Feinstein is a co-sponsor of the legislation, the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007. The bill was sponsored by Senators Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and Bob Bennett (R-Utah).

This afternoon, the Senate voted 57-42 in favor of a procedural motion to limit debate on the legislation. Without the necessary 60 votes, the motion was denied.    » read more »