U.S. House Passes Bill for Statehood for Most of Washington, D.C.

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On April 22, the U.S. House passed HR 51, the bill to make almost all of the District of Columbia a state. The vote was completely party-line.

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U.S. House Passes Bill for Statehood for Most of Washington, D.C. — 46 Comments

  1. What would happen to the 3 Presidential electors from the district under HR 51?

  3. The bill includes “a section creating faster procedures for repealing the 23rd Amendment” but of course a repeal would need to go through 3/4 of the states and Congress can’t speed up that.

    If the repeal doesn’t get out of Congress or doesn’t get 3/4 of the states (and one suspects there are plenty people out there who hope to get the statehood without the 23rd repeal) then there’s a problem. A few dozen people claiming an address in the federal remnant could and almost certainly would claim they’re entitled to a polling place and three electoral votes.

  4. This is a plan from Democrats to swing more power to Democrats in Congress, as it would give them to US Senators and one US House Rep.

    How about make DC a separate country instead?

  6. eeyn, the 23rd amendment says congress may decide how the seat of government casts its three electoral votes. Congress is free to say they go automatically to the winner of the national popular vote, or any other idea. There doesn’t need to be a popular vote to award the electors for the seat of government.

  7. Richard, of course you’re right. Congress could use the NPV winner take all, or NPV proportional. But they could award the votes directly themselves (like a state legislature could), or award them based on the popular vote in PR+VI+GU, or auction them to the highest bidder.

  8. @ RW: Does HR51 actually specify about what will happen to the 3 electoral votes?

    If not, then either it’s a sloppy piece of legislation, or just a gimmick that even the sponsors don’t believe will become law.

  9. I believe the remnant of what would be D.C. under this plan is drawn to have no residents. So if you have no permanent residents, who are the actual person 3 Electors?

  14. No one says the electors for the federal district need to live there. It is amazing that most states have no law that says their presidential electors must be residents of that state. And there are cases of out-of-state candidates for presidential elector running.

  15. So HR51 doesn’t say anything specifically about what happens to the electors?

    It seems like folks are speculating on what MIGHT happen, but no on knows for sure.

  16. The whole RED communist Donkey scheme is to get 2 more RED communist USA Senators and 1 more USA RED communist Donkey USA Rep to match the 3 12/23 Amdt RED communist Donkey Prez/VP electors —

    ie add to the total ANTI-Democracy minority rule gerrymander ROT in the USA.
    —–
    Repral 23 Amdt
    DC to be part of MD for ALL Fed election purposes.

  18. Also – All other USA colonies to be part of MD for ALL Fed election purposes.

  20. @Andy The senate seats they would gain would simply increase the likelihood of stalemating the senate, as it still tends to lean Republican (typical 52 to 48, so it becomes 52 to 50. And since there is a hard cap on the amount of representatives, the seat gained by DC would be lost by another state; likely California or New York, and likely a Democratic district…. or a Republican district gets redrawn but it would become a highly competitive one…. there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

  21. The cap on the size of the house isn’t very hard at all, it can changed with a simple act, and that probably would have been on the agenda if the dems got the big sweep at all levels they were expecting.
    The bill specifies the House increases to 436 until the next census, following the precedent of the 20th century admissions.

  22. The District of Columbia should never become a state and should remain independent of any state.

  23. Increasing the size of the House by adopting the Wyoming Rule would add about 100-120 new members, and have the effect of diluting any one Rep that DC might get.

  24. Walter, RE: “The Wyoming Rule” – I didn’t know it had a name. I had come up with that idea years ago on my own. Yes, I agree that they should do it. Also, according to the numbers I ran, it would keep my West Virginia at 3 reps.

  26. And you can dilute the effect of 2 new Senators from DC (and even with 2 new Senators from PR) by adding more states, which I have mentioned before in BAN comments.

    IMO, the logical balance to DC would be to create East Washington State, and to PR would be East Oregon.

    Altho, it’s also my opinion that PR would be better off becoming a full associated state, like Micronesia. That would free them from the limitations of the Jones Act on their shipping.

    Some Puerto Ricans fret that they might lose US citizenship by becoming an associated state, but I don’t believe that the US can deprive anyone of US citizenship if they choose to keep it.

    The Republicans need to become more creative to these challenges, and less obstructionist.

  27. NOOO dilution of anything —

    the corrupt HR51 bill passed on a TOTAL party line vote — obey the top party hack or get purged.
    —-
    PR
    APPV
    TOTSOP

  28. Democrats need to add some states and get more Senate and electoral votes to more accurately reflect the popular will.

  29. @ Steve:

    The “popular will” is more complex and diverse that I think you imagine. Even the House of Representatives is closely divided, and could flip in 2022.

    IMO, everyone needs to recognize that “blueness” and “redness” is pretty evenly divided across the country, both in terms of states and population, and that both major parties need to reject a “rule-or-ruin” attitude, and start to seek consensus building.

    Also, in my partisan opinion, the Libertarian Party represents the consensus building bridge between the Democrats and Republicans. In both 2016 and 2020, Libertarian votes were decisive. The party needs to be more “red” in economics, and more “blue” in social policy.

  30. In my partisan, but enlightened, viewpoint, if the US is to have a united future, it will be a libertarian future:

    The economy will have to be capitalist, free-market, free-trade, low tax, and low regulation.

    The society will have to be socially liberal, victim-less crimes repealed, and immigration liberalized.

    Otherwise the blue-red civil war will continue, and possibly split the country permanently.

  31. The only reason the house is closely divided is due to partisan gerrymandering, primarily by Republican legislatures, which also perpetuate their own Republican gerrymandering majorities through the same process. More people are registered as Democrats, more people voted Democratic for House and state legislatures – it wasn’t close – and more people, decisively, support Democratic policies in polls.

    But, those policies can’t become law. Republicans hold them up through gerrymandering themselves an advantage in the house and state legislative bodies. They already get an advantage in the senate and electoral college. They use it to appoint Republican judges and justices. They also hold them up through the filibuster. And with myriad types of targeted vote suppression, which are getting exponentially worse.

  32. ONE econ result of the statist control freak communism/fascism since 1929 —

    the $$$ 40 plus TRILLION debts in the USA/States/Locals debt — double plus the USA GDP – getting worse by the second.

    IE — USA – about to have the ALL time econ collapse in world history.

    About ZERO mention of such debts in 2020 election cycle by all the USELESS standard party hack robots in the know-it-all media —

    more communist/fascist than ever — now mere megaphones for the top statist communist/fascist MONSTERS in ALL govts in the USA — gerrymander monarchs/oligarchs / Prez/VP, guvs, ags, sos, etc. / party hack judges.
    —
    PR
    APPV
    TOTSOP

  33. @ Steve:

    “Close” is a relative term. If it’s close enough for third party votes to make a difference, it’s close enough to matter.

  35. @ Steve:

    A key form of “voter suppression” is keeping candidates off the ballot so that voters have fewer choices to begin with. And that includes “Top 2” which is a very pernicious form of voter suppression.

    Did you know that third parties in general, and the Libertarian Party in particular used to get a significant number of votes for Reps in Congress in California before Top 2?

    How can you say that popular will is clear, if voters are not able to choose candididaes who would have been willing to run, but who were prevented from doing so?

  36. Because the libertarians were on, the ballot in every state for president so we know about what, their support level is. The third parties put together don’t come close to the real gap between democrats and republicans. But I agree with you they should be allowed to run.

  37. In 2016, the popular vote total for the Libertarian party alone (4.489.221) more than surpassed the margin between Trump and Clinton (2,868,691).

    This of course was not true in 2020, but the vote total for Jorgensen was 1,865,724, still the 2nd highest Presidential vote total for a Libertarian, in spite of 2020 being a very polarized election conducted under very difficult circumstances.

    Keep in mind that voter suppression includes a lot more than what just happens on or close to election day. Plurality voting and single member disrticts narrow voter’s choices considerably. Many Congressional and state legislative positions go unchallenged every election. How can we assess the “will of the people” if they have no real choices in the first place? What does a vote for a member of Congress tell you about the support for his party if he has no opponent? And then, you add up all those votes across all districts and try to tell me what the “will of the people’ is?

  38. There are other measures such as polls. While there is a lot of voter suppression of third parties, there are way more Democratic supporters who are impacted by various kinds of vote suppression.

  39. Democrat policies ruin the country. Their voters are low information voters who don’t know what they’re doing. My vote should count more than theirs. If they can’t bother to get an ID to confirm their identity then they shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

  40. Republican policies ruin the country. Their voters are low information voters who don’t know what they are doing. Their votes should not count more than mine. Your idiotic talking point about ID is a good example of low information or more likely just lying, something else Republicans do a lot of.

  42. It’s interesting to note that, with the current membership of the House fixed at 435 members, DC would be over-represented with just 1 Rep, but, under the Wyoming Rule, DC’s one member would be very close to the average district population.

  43. GEE – B-O-T-H COMMIE DONKEY AND FASCIST ELEPHANT POLICIES HAVE WRECKED THE USA

    — STATISM AT WORK SINCE 1776.

  44. The Republicans are better than the Democrats on some things, while the Democrats are better than the Republicans on other things.

    If a close political balance can be maintained between them in the House and Senate, the Libertarians can serve a function similar to the Free Democrats in Germany, guiding both parties in the right direction to make Germany a great model of liberal capitalist democracy.

    Of course, it can’t be quite the same as Germany, which has a parliamentary system. But with ranked choice voting for President and members of Congress, the Libertarian voters can punish the bad D’s and R’s, and reward the good D’s and R’s.

  45. “The Republicans are better than the Democrats on some things, while the Democrats are better than the Republicans on other things.”

    Issues should be weighted, as in some issues are more important than others. I consider the right to keep and bear arms to be one of the top 4 most important issues, if not THE most important issue. The Democratic Party has basically declared war on the right to keep and bear arms. If gun rights are lost in this country, or, if they are neutered to the point of being practically worthless, then any chance at having a libertarian, or libertarian leaning, society will be eliminated, and once gun rights are taken away, there is no coming back from that. This makes the Democratic Party an extreme threat to liberty. This does not mean that the Republican Party is not a threat to liberty as well, because they are, but it also does not mean that it is wise to advocate any positions, such as making DC and Puerto Rico US states, or advocating for mass immigration of large numbers of people who are going to statistically vote for Democrats in super-majority numbers, as being good ideas that will make us more free, because are not.

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