WASHINGTON: Welcome to D.C.; how about a vote?

Good neighbors are as precious as rare gems and as difficult to come by for too many who spread terrible “knucklehead neighbors” tales.

President-elect Barack Obama and his family have barely moved to the nation’s capital and already Washingtonians are reeling from the positive and negative effects of the presence of their new neighbors.

Traffic tie-ups and long delays marked the first family-elect’s back-to-work and school Monday as media hounds hawked the Obama girls on their first day to the posh private Sidwell Friends School in Northwest.

Let’s not make that gridlocked trek a daily occurrence, not just for the sake of stressed area commuters but more for the privacy of the young girls, Malia and Sasha.

In an initial show of good neighborliness, Mr. Obama and the Presidential Inaugural Committee announced Monday that the main ball on Jan. 20 will be dubbed a “Neighborhood Ball” and focus on average Americans, particularly those disenfranchised residents of the District.

“This is an inauguration for all Americans,” Mr. Obama said. “I want to make sure that we had an event that would be open to our new neighborhood here in Washington, D.C., and also neighborhoods across the country.”

All Americans? Surely Mr. Obama knows that D.C. residents do not enjoy the fundamental rights of “all Americans.”

Tickets are specifically being set aside for D.C. residents to attend the premiere event at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, named after the city’s first elected mayor, and “will be free or at an affordable price.”

How nice of you, neighbor.

No word yet, though, on whether the limousine transporting the historic 44th president down America’s Main Street will display the “Taxation without Representation” license plates, as the D.C. Council requested to subtly let the world know that 600,000 Americans do not have voting rights in Congress.

Symbolic gestures are fine, but they are no substitute for the real thing.

No doubt D.C. residents are pleased that the president-elect is hosting a party, in part, to recognize his new neighbors, but they may be even more welcome if he got the leaders of his party to enact legislation that would grant the city’s only delegate a vote in the House, ASAP.

“Obama in the house.” What about “Dee Cee” in the House?

On Tuesday, D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, reintroduced the D.C. House Voting Rights Act as Congress began its 111th session.

The bill, which raises the number of U.S. representatives from 435 to 437, allows for one vote for D.C. residents, who are predominantly Democrats, and an additional vote for Utah citizens, who are predominantly Republicans.

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