Delegates

In addition to its 435 voting members, the House of Representatives has five members with limited powers. They represent the District of Columbia and four islands closely linked to the United States: Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. All are known officially as delegates except the representative of Puerto Rico, who is called a resident commissioner. The delegates are elected for two-year terms, while the resident commissioner serves for four years.

The five are allowed to vote in committees and make speeches on the floor, but they may not vote on the House floor. In 1993 the House Democratic majority changed the rules to allow the five to participate in many key floor votes. Under the new rule, the delegates and the resident commissioner could participate in votes taken when the House constituted itself as the committee of the whole, a parliamentary framework under which the full House meets to debate and amend important legislation.

The new rule outraged many House Republicans, who charged that their voting power had been diluted in violation of the Constitution. (All five of the limited members were Democrats.) In response, House Democrats agreed to soften the rule by requiring an automatic revote that excluded the delegates whenever their votes determined the outcome of an issue. Republicans lost a court challenge of the rule, but they ultimately prevailed. When the Republican Party took control of the House in 1995, the rule was rescinded and the five lost their floor-voting privileges.

Nonvoting positions have existed in some form or other since 1794, when the House received James White as the nonvoting delegate from the Territory South of the Ohio River, which later became the state of Tennessee. Most of the current positions date from the 1970s; Puerto Rico's position was granted in 1900.

In addition to its House delegate, the District of Columbia in 1990 elected two “shadow” senators and one “shadow” representative. The delegation, which carried no congressional recognition, public budget, or salaries, was also given the mandate of lobbying Congress for District statehood. The “shadow member” tradition dates to the early nineteenth century, when six territories sent shadow senators to Congress before their admission as states. (See District of Columbia and Congress.)