D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton is urging Congress to pass a voting rights bill by Feb. 12, the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birthday.
In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Norton asked Pelosi to push for quick approval of the D.C. Voting Rights Act, which would give the District of Columbia a House seat.
Norton said she got the idea of using Lincoln's birthday as a deadline from Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
The voting rights bill passed in the House last year and would have added a temporary at-large seat for Republican-leaning Utah. But the bill stalled in the Senate.
Norton said now that the Senate has gained six Democratic seats, she hopes both houses in Congress will approve the bill.
"We fully understand the weight of the unprecedented issues that confront you and the new Congress," Norton said in the letter. "However, we believe that with an even larger Democratic majority here and in the Senate, and a party committed to this issue in its platform, the District of Columbia Voting Rights Act should be an easy, bipartisan vote in both the House and Senate."
Norton said she was encouraged by her conversations during the primaries with President-elect Barack Obama, who cosponsored the bill in the Senate.
The D.C. City Council recently sent a letter to Obama asking him to use D.C.'s "Taxation without Representation," license plates on his presidential limousine as he rides down Pennsylvania Avenue in the inauguration parade after being sworn in.
