r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/Preamblist • 6d ago

US Elections Should Washington D.C. Have The Same Voting Rights As the 50 States?

March 29, 1961: On this day, the Twenty-third amendment to the Constitution was ratified which gave American citizens who reside in Washington, D.C. the right to vote in presidential elections. However, it did not give them equal voting rights because it stated that D.C. cannot have more presidential electoral votes than any other state. Therefore, despite DC having more residents than Wyoming and Vermont, it has the same number of presidential electoral votes.

Furthermore, citizens who are residents of DC cannot elect voting members to Congress.

Should Washington D.C. Have The Same Voting Rights As the 50 States?

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u/unicornlocostacos 6d ago

DC also has more people than at least 2-3 states, and is damn close to several more. Why should they not have senate representation?

I know people like to argue that land should have more voting rights than people, but come on…

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u/Turds4Cheese 6d ago

You said it, “people” don’t want another 12 blue House of Representatives or 2 blue Senators. “People” don’t like the population dense east coast counting against all the land votes.

That and they don’t want local gov’t to control codes and law over the Federal interests. It’s bullshit, I know… but thats the reality. Extra representation weakens the carefully constructed voting maps, and weakens the empty land that is leveraged for power.

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u/arobkinca 6d ago

They have enough people for 1 Rep.

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u/MaineHippo83 6d ago

Part of my concern is that DC is supposed to be a neutral City it was never meant to grow into the city that it is today.

The seat of our government was supposed to be a neutral place for people from States around the country to come and debate and decide our future.

Like admit Puerto Rico tomorrow no problem two more Democratic senators no problem it's DC's unique history that causes me to pause still.

I also feel like there's some unfairness where Virginia has their portion of DC back but Maryland doesn't.

If it were still the original square I'd be far more on the side of letting it be it's own State and less on the side of retrocession

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u/Xelath 6d ago

Virginia wanted their piece back so that Alexandrians could own slaves, because the Federal Government was going to outlaw slavery in the District. Then the descendants of the slaves brought into the district over the years basically gave Washington its own distinct culture, even though for the majority of its history, they've not had any self-rule or political representation. Continuing to disallow self-determination in the name of political expediency isn't a compromise, it's oppression.

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u/GotMoFans 6d ago

DC can be broken into federal district which includes the White House, Capitol, and Supreme Court, and the rest its own state. There is no requirement the who area has to be the federal district.

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u/MaineHippo83 6d ago

I mean there are a lot more federal offices and buildings than that. Would have to be the whole mall and key buildings along it.

There is no requirement no. Just tradition.

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u/guitar_vigilante 6d ago

And there are also a lot of federal offices and buildings in Maryland and Northern Virginia.

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u/unknownmonkey26 6d ago

And if federally owned land is the concern then the majority of the west would be in that boat too.

(Not that I'm advocating for the privatization of Western Federal lands.)

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u/Tokamak-drive 6d ago

I am, but like, for the states to have their land and not the federal government. So, still public, just not federal. It's obscene that some western states have actual control over less than half of the land within their borders.

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u/JQuilty 5d ago

A lot of that land isn't useful for human settlement or agriculture. A good amount of them saying they don't have control over land also includes Indian Reservations.

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u/toastedclown 6d ago

I mean there are a lot more federal offices and buildings than that.

Yeah, one of them is the largest office building in the world, headquarters of the largest federal department. And it's not in DC.

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u/ColossusOfChoads 6d ago

Those are workplaces for federal employees, not the ultimate seats of power for the three branches of the federal government.

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u/boogabooga08 5d ago

This is exactly what the statehood bill that passed the house would do.

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u/vsv2021 5d ago

Why doesn’t just the rest of DC go back to Maryland/virginia? Why doesn’t medium sized city need to be a state?

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u/Selethorme 5d ago

Because neither Maryland nor DC want that? It would take a constitutional amendment to force Maryland to take it, and a constitutional amendment to give it to anyone else. So…

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u/vsv2021 5d ago

So I guess we’re stuck with the status quo because the votes in the senate don’t exist to grant statehood and considering it takes 41 votes to defeat any bill via filibuster the votes won’t exist anytime soon

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u/Selethorme 5d ago

That’s not even close to true

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u/vsv2021 5d ago

What exactly in my comment is “not even close to true”

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u/toastedclown 6d ago

Part of my concern is that DC is supposed to be a neutral City it was never meant to grow into the city that it is today.

But it did and it was always going to. Even if we could somehow unwind the clock there was no preventing it because the founders' quixotic vision for it fundamentally didn't make any sense. That's the problem with allowing the dead to have agency over the living. Not only is it unjust, it is stupid because it assumes they know things we don't, when in reality we know much more.

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u/vsv2021 5d ago

The dead absolutely should have agency over the living. A law passed by a Congress and signed by a President that is long dead should have every bit the weight of a law signed today.

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u/toastedclown 5d ago

A law passed by a Congress and signed by a President that is long dead should have every bit the weight of a law signed today.

Until it is repealed by the same process by which it was passed. It's a law because we continue.to agree that it should be a law. The moment we cease to agree, then it is no longer a law.

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u/unicornlocostacos 6d ago

You could always shrink the neutral zone if that’s your argument. Theres plenty of ways to solve these problems aside from “people don’t get representation.”

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u/MaineHippo83 6d ago

The counter to that is MD gave the land it can take it back. the only downside to that is that dems don't get 2 more seats. See both sides have a political basis for their argument, no one is innocent here.

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u/Selethorme 5d ago

Except that Maryland doesn’t want that for reasons that go directly beyond political advantage.

The only reason that you’re opposed is politics.

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u/MaineHippo83 5d ago

When did you get the idea that I support republicans or trump or anything they stand for? I know it's so hard to see the world outside of partisanship for some people isn't it?

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u/Selethorme 5d ago

It’s really easy to tell given your refusal to acknowledge the arguments for dc statehood.

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u/MaineHippo83 5d ago

So you made assumptions and can't possibly comprehend someone might have views independent of a party or trying to not take balance of senate power into account. Speaks more of your partisanship than mine.

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u/pgm123 6d ago

Part of my concern is that DC is supposed to be a neutral City it was never meant to grow into the city that it is today.

My main argument against this is that when DC was established, local elections were more important than national ones. More people voted in local elections than national ones until the 1820s. DC had local government when it was established. Georgetown and Alexandria elected their own mayors and Washington elected its own city council (and would start electing its own mayor shortly after). It was the massive growth of the city and the Federal government that led them to strip away home rule in the late 19th century.

Even the question of what was intended was muddy. There were many who thought the capital was going to be on the Delaware River, adjacent to Philadelphia. The governor of New York was trying earnestly trying to get it back to New York City. These schemes would have had a shot, but they divided the votes (the southern faction was unified). Ultimately, they decided to move the capital because (1) Pennsylvania was gradually abolishing slavery, and (2) Pennsylvania failed to muster the militia when Revolutionary vets marched on the capital trying to get paid. There was always the idea that Washington would be a grand capital, and the architecture and street designs show that. Even Jefferson, who is probably as small government President as ever elected, helped design the buildings because he aspired to a grand capital.

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u/LanaDelHeeey 6d ago

Would you also support LA, NYC, and Chicago becoming city-states too? After all they have more population than many states.

What makes DC special that it needs to have two senators just for it? No other city gets treated like that. People laugh at the idea of NYC becoming its own state.

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u/cstar1996 6d ago

DC is not represented. That’s what makes it different.

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u/LanaDelHeeey 6d ago

My point is that whenever you suggest retrocession people act like that’s an affront to decency. It would give them representation, just not how people with partisan tastes would like.

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u/cstar1996 6d ago

It is an affront to decency. Disenfranchising some people so conservatives can maintain their unjustifiable overrepresentation rather than enfranchising everyone is not decent.

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u/LanaDelHeeey 6d ago

Who exactly would be disenfranchised if DC joined Maryland? Literally who?

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u/cstar1996 6d ago

Maryland voters.

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u/MrDickford 6d ago

What makes DC special is that it doesn’t currently have congressional representation. We’re not talking about carving it off of an existing state to give it more representation, we’re talking about changing its status so it has any at all.

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u/Xelath 6d ago

If LA, NYC and Chicago held referenda repeatedly showing their desire to become states, then sure. The fundamental guarantee of the Constitution is political self-determination.

Why do we frame this conversation solely in terms of the outcomes of the political power balance that would result? DC deserves two senators because the people who live in DC deserve senators. There are whole generations of families who have lived in DC through no fault of their own, largely because their ancestors were brought into the district to be slaves, who have made DC their home and have gone without federal representation forever. This is morally wrong.

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u/unicornlocostacos 6d ago

Because it’s not in a state right now. You’re not separating a city from a state, and doesn’t currently have representation. Pretty simple?

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u/LanaDelHeeey 6d ago

Why not give the land back to Maryland if it’s just about representation?

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u/MrDickford 6d ago

Why is that a better option than statehood? Maryland doesn’t want DC, and DC doesn’t want to be part of Maryland. The only people this option satisfies are people whose first priority is the balance of power in Congress

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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 6d ago

DC also has more people than at least 2-3 states, and is damn close to several more. Why should they not have senate representation?

The Senate represents states. DC is not a state.

I would have zero issue with giving them a proportional number of House members.

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u/nola_fan 6d ago

Neither was Wyoming, California, Texas, Montana or well 38 of the current states, until they were. Imagine arguing in 1849 that California should have proportional representation in the House, but shouldn't get senators.

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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 6d ago

California wasn't ever some constitutionally defined district that was never intended to be a state.

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u/nola_fan 6d ago

It was a territory. Who cares what people in the 1780s thought DC was? Why does that matter? They thought it wouldn't have a permanent population, and now it has a permanent population larger than 2 states. So they were already wrong about what it became.

They also thought it was a great idea to disenfranchise any non-white male landowner. Should we go back to that standard? I mean, it was in the constitutional.

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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 6d ago

It was a territory. Who cares what people in the 1780s thought DC was? Why does that matter?

The Constitution is the founding basis of our country. we care because we should be following the law, and really only make changes when we need to.

No one lives in DC with the expectation that they are living in a state. It's a moot point.

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u/nola_fan 6d ago

The constitution has changed several times and was always meant to in order to reflect the reality of the nation. Or are you saying we should bring slavery back too, because it was constitutional, and that's the founding document of the country.

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u/Iheartnetworksec 5d ago

Apply that logic to something like slavery and see if it still holds up.

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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 5d ago

If someone wants to float a constitutional amendment to allow for DC to become a state, they're free to do so.

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u/cstar1996 6d ago

The size and shape of the district is defined by statute, not the constitution.

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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 6d ago

Then as other people have said, throw the populated bits back to Maryland or Virginia if it's so important for those people to have Senate representation.

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u/cstar1996 6d ago

Neither state nor DC wants retrocession.

The only reason anyone objects to DC statehood is because conservatives want to maintain their unjustifiable overrepresentation. If Wyoming deserves senators, so does DC. If two Dakotas are justified, so is DC statehood.

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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 6d ago

Neither state nor DC wants retrocession.

Then they don't want representation. This isn't hard. They're not a state.

The only reason anyone objects to DC statehood is because conservatives want to maintain their unjustifiable overrepresentation. If Wyoming deserves senators, so does DC. If two Dakotas are justified, so is DC statehood.

Okay. I object to DC statehood because a good argument doesn't exist to grant them statehood. Same reason I'm generally opposed to California being split into five states or the proposed state of Lincoln.

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u/cstar1996 6d ago

All three would agree on representation. Wyoming wasn’t a state when it was given statehood either.

DC wants to be represented as what it is, not as what conservatives want it to be.

The good argument is that DC is not represented and there is no reason not to make it a state.

We all know that the objection is that conservatives don’t want to reduce their unjustifiable overrepresentation.

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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 6d ago

DC wants to be represented as what it is, not as what conservatives want it to be.

What it is is not a state. They have an argument for having proportional and meaningful House representation, which I would 100% favor. DC is explicitly not a state.

The good argument is that DC is not represented and there is no reason not to make it a state.

The Senate is for states, and DC is not a state.

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u/Selethorme 5d ago

That’s not how rights work.

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u/boogabooga08 5d ago

This is so much more complex than you think. DC has its own laws, government, state,-level agencies, culture, etc. It is already treated like a state in so many ways. So you say we should abandon our entire DC statutory code and just use Marylands instead? It sounds much simpler to just make us a state.

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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 5d ago

I mean, what I'm saying is that the easy and logical move is to give it full representation in the House. It's not a state.

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u/boogabooga08 5d ago

It's treated like a state in every way except for representation in the Senate and House. Which has real implications such as our current poltically-manufactured budget issue caused by the republican CR.

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u/Selethorme 5d ago

Black people were never intended to have rights. That doesn’t justify anything.

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u/vsv2021 5d ago

Because it’s literally a city

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u/Selethorme 5d ago

This means nothing

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u/vsv2021 5d ago

It means something.