On December 6, a committee of the District of Columbia held a hearing on a proposal to advertise the District’s lack of voting representation in Congress. The proposal includes large electronic signs at major sports stadiums. It is likely that private funding would be available. The Committee is not permitted to approve the idea for a certain number of days after the hearing, but Committee approval is expected in January 2008. The signs will emphasize that D.C. residents have paid billions in federal taxes over the decades.
The United States is the world’s only nation that has elections for representatives to the national legislature, but gives no representation in that legislature to residents of its capital city.
DC should not be represented in the House or Senate unless it becomes part of a state. Members of the House and senate are to be chosen by the “several states” according to the Constitution and DC is not a state or even part of a state.
Then the country ought to be amending the Constitution. Instead no one does anything, and this flaw in our nation goes unfixed, decade after decade.
As I stated on another blog, I believe the best solution is to attach the populated portions of DC to Maryland. It would require no ammendment, would give DC residents the representation they have a right to, and wouldn’t create more unnecessary assymetry in the Senate.
Putting D.C. inside Maryland would not fix the problem that U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico and other U.S. possessions have no voting representation in Congress, nor any vote for President. Those U.S. citizens must obey the laws Congress passes and that the President enforces. Since they have no voice in the federal government, they are effectively living in a dictatorship. If Puerto Rico were a state, it would be more populous than 25 other states.
Canada, Australia, France, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Denmark, are nations that either have overseas possessions, or they are federal systems and have some units that don’t qualify as states or provinces. Yet the people living in those places may vote in national elections.
The United States and the United Kingdom are the only countries in the world that deny the vote (for the national legislative body) to some of their resident adult citizens because of where (within that nation) those citizens live.
Put Puerto Rico inside Maryland too ;P
Kidding, but PR is a much better candidate for statehood than DC, and I support it even against all the moaning about language. They’d have it by now if their referendums were worded a bit clearer (assuming a successful one motivated Congress to action).
I don’t know what the most workable solution to the outlying territories problem is – could a catch all ammendment really cover each in its particular situation? Could statehood be justified for any individual one, or together as a whole? I’m skeptical that a truly fair and reasonable solution can be found without some very radical reform of our federal system.
Has anyone given any thought to what the residents of Maryland want? I seriously doubt that a majority of them would vote to annex the District of Columbia with all of its attendant urban problems. It would be a big net minus from the standpoint of crime, social services needed, tax base, etc. etc. And I say that with regret.
Richard is correct on most counts except: (1) DC and PR (and Guam, for that matter) do have “a voice in the federal government,” by way of non-voting delegates (although Eleanor Holmes Norton gets to vote in committee), and (2) Puerto Rico has its own tax system and its residents do not pay US federal income tax. The problem with DC is that its residents are truly in a “taxation without representation” situation.
The obvious solution to this, and it has been obvious for decades, is either to make D.C. a state or amend the Constitution so that D.C. is treated as if it were a state in terms of congressional representation. The problems are (1) hardly anyone outside of the D.C. area cares about this issue, unfortunately, and (2) fairness take a distant back seat to Republican politics when it is obvious that two Democratic senators and one Democratic congressperson will be added to the rolls.
Many people have advocated making Puerto Rico a state simultaneously, since PR is likely to go Republican. I don’t have any problem with that. But this idiotic injustice of D.C. residents being forced to pay federal taxes and fighting & dying in Iraq & Afghanistan with no voting representation in congress is a national disgrace.
And the juvenile response I frequently hear when I bring this issue up (“then go live somewhere else”) completely misses the obvious fact that even if D.C. were to be emptied of ALL of its residents (even assuming most of them even had the resources to pick up & move), the injustice would remain. It needs to be remedied.
Non-voting delegates might be a “voice” in one sense of the term, but even with comittee power they’re still not an integral part of our process – no final decisions get made at the committee level.
Puerto Rico would be about an average sized state. DC would be among the smallest. Given what the Senate has become, I don’t think this situation needs to be further aggravated by adding another low population state – it’s unfair to those of us with the big delegations in the House.
No, I never (in my life) stopped to think what the residents of Maryland might want. Might be a good idea to ask.
The reason for establishing a District is that the seat of US government ought to have a place for meeting that is free from interference by any one particular state. It is essential for smooth functioning that it sets the rules for its own environs.
Now, in theory, the House represents The People of the United States. Even though DC residents do not reside in any state, they are still citizens of the United States. I think it was an oversight on the part of the Founders to exclude them from having representation in the House. However, it is important that DC not be a state, for the reason I mentioned above, and therefore rightly should have no representation in the Senate.
A change like this I think is a good “middle ground” position that, while it would probably still require an amendment to enact, holds to the original ideals of the Constitution. DC already gets a say in presidential elections. I’d rather see that based on “correct” enumeration in the EC by the same way states are, num Reps (which would probably be 2) + num Sens (which would be 0), instead of being the exception.
Canada doesn’t seem to have any trouble with having Ottawa be part of Ontario Province. And virtually all US state capitals are part of one particular county.
Residents of the District of Columbia should be permitted to pick their State for purposes of voting, including all federal, state, and legislative elections. Local elections may be included at the discretion of each State.
For purposes of apportionment, the resident population of the district would be allocated pro rata based on the proportions of the US adult citizen population that chooses each State.
For purposes of voting residence and redistricting, voters shall be treated as residing at the state capital in their selected State. Alternatively, a State may permit voters to choose a county seat, town hall, actual residential location in the state. States that are adjacent to the District, (Virginia and Maryland), may treat the territory of the district as being an extension of their own for purposes of redistricting.
DC should become a state. Making it into a new state is the best way to give justice to the residents of DC for all of the years that they have been deprived of democratic representation in the national government.
Puerto Rico, on the other hand, should decide whether it wants to become an independent country or a US state. The same goes for all of the other “US possessions.”
Hopefully they will give DC the representation they deserve and are owed. I believe they stated they preferred statehood, not retro-cession or any other option.