On October 27, the Washington, D.C. city council held hearings on PR 21-302, which would authorize the city government to launch a multi-media and petition campaign for statehood for the District of Columbia. See this story. The bill is co-sponsored by a majority of members of the council, so it is likely to pass. The lead author is Councilmember Vincent Orange.

Bills are introduced in every session of Congress for statehood. These bills always specify that the name of the state would be New Columbia. The current bill, by Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting representative for D.C. in the House, is HR 317. It has 125 co-sponsors, all of them Democrats.

Some critics claim the bill is unconstitutional, because there are certain parts of the U.S. Constitution that seem to imply that D.C. can’t be a state. On the other hand, critics of the status quo argue that the United States is the only nation in the world in which adult citizens in the national capital have no voting representation in the national legislature.

Pennsylvania holds a statewide election on November 3, 2015. The voter turnout will determine how many signatures are required for statewide minor party and independent candidates in 2016. According to this Lancaster newspaper, observers of politics are expecting a low turnout.

The only statewide partisan elections are judicial races. The formula for determining how many signatures are needed for statewide office in 2016 is 2% of the vote total, for the highest vote-getting judicial candidate.

In the 2013 election, voter turnout was extraordinarily low, resulting in a 2014 petition requirement of 16,639, the lowest in Pennsylvania since the existing law had been in effect (the law was passed in 1971). Nevertheless, no statewide minor party or independent petitions succeeded in 2014.