19781776 Club
Senate votes 67-32 to give Washington full seats in Congress
The states now have seven years to ratify what the House already approved by a landslide.
Washington, D.C. had never sent a voting member to Congress, and 700,000 residents of the capital had no say in the laws that governed them. On August 22, 1978, the Senate passed the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment, following the House's 289-127 vote in March, with 48 Democrats and 19 Republicans in support. The measure would have granted the District full congressional representation and a role in future constitutional amendments, while repealing the Twenty-third Amendment's separate electoral vote provision. It then moved to the state legislatures, which had until August 22, 1985, to ratify it…
