WASHINGTON: Lawmakers approved a bill to grant a legislative voting right for the first time to the US federal capital city, to address what critics see as a major undemocratic “flaw” in the US political system.

“For more than 200 years, the citizens of the District of Columbia have been denied full voting representation. This legislation corrects a serious flaw in our democracy,” House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at the vote on Thursday.

“Today, we seek to affirm an enduring principle of our democracy: the right to be heard and represented fully.” Members of the House approved on a 241-177 vote the bill to allocate a House seat to a representative of the District of Columbia, the mid-Atlantic enclave of nearly 600,000 people wedged between Maryland and Virginia, which is home to the federal government.

The House representative for the district, which is not one of the 50 US states, currently has the right to participate in debates but not to cast a vote -- even though some states with members in the Senate and the House have smaller populations.

In a bid to overcome opposition to representation for Washington, a traditional bastion of the Democratic Party, the House measure also creates an additional representative's seat for Utah, a solidly Republican western state that is experiencing a population boom.

However, the bill faces an uphill battle in the Senate, and President George W. Bush has threatened to veto it.—AFP