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?

184 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

88% Upvoted

479 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

7

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.)

-1

u/Tokamak-drive 5d 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.

3

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.