The District of Columbia has never had full voting representation in the United States Congress. The District elects one Congressional Delegate (currently Eleanor Holmes Norton) who is entitled to sit in the House of Representatives and vote in committee, but is not allowed to take part in floor votes. Efforts are currently underway to enact a statute that would entitle DC residents to elect one full representative to the House, as if the District were a state. This proposal for a statute to enhance District of Columbia voting rights in the House is called the "DC Vote" proposal.
Advocates of this approach assert[1] that it is constitutional. However, opponents assert that similar goals could be constitutionally achieved by other means.
The DC Vote proposal would not give the District of Columbia any representation in the United States Senate, but it would have an impact on the Electoral College. Under the DC Vote proposal, the voting power of the District's citizens in presidential elections would remain unchanged at three electoral votes (i.e. 193,843 people per electoral vote), pursuant to the 23rd Amendment. The DC Vote proposal, by awarding Utah an additional House seat, would result in that state gaining an additional electoral vote.
Taxation and representation
The citizens of Washington D.C. are able to vote in presidential elections, but they have no voting representative in Congress. Still, citizens of Washington D.C. are required to pay federal taxes. The notion of "taxation without representation" was a rallying cry during the American Revolution, and it continues to be an argument in favor of a statute granting a vote in the House; however, it is also an argument in favor of the various other solutions to this problem such as statehood, retrocession, and constitutional amendment.
The issue of taxation without representation in the District of Columbia is not new. For example, Chief Justice John Marshall addressed it in an 1820 opinion for the Supreme Court, as follows:
The difference between requiring a continent, with an immense population, to submit to be taxed by a government having no common interest with it, separated from it by a vast ocean, restrained by no principle of apportionment, and associated with it by no common feelings; and permitting the representatives of the American people, under the restrictions of our constitution, to tax a part of the society...which has voluntarily relinquished the right of representation, and has adopted the whole body of Congress for its legitimate government, as is the case with the district, is too obvious not to present itself to the minds of all. Although in theory it might be more congenial to the spirit of our institutions to admit a representative from the district, it may be doubted whether, in fact, its interests would be rendered thereby the more secure; and certainly the constitution does not consider their want of a representative in Congress as exempting it from equal taxation.[2]
In the years since Marshall wrote those words, the District of Columbia has achieved voting rights in presidential elections, and its delegate in the House of Representatives has also achieved voting rights in committee. Only citizens of Wyoming currently have more voting power in presidential elections than D.C. citizens have, per capita.
Primary constitutional provisions at issue
Constitutional law experts have concerns about the proposed "DC Vote" solution, which would give D.C. citizens a vote in Congress by a simple statute like the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007. They contend that similar results could be achieved constitutionally by (1) granting full statehood to Washington D.C., or (2) retroceding territory of Washington D.C. back to the State of Maryland, or (3) adopting a constitutional amendment granting Washington D.C. a vote in the House of Representatives.
The second sentence of the U.S. Constitution (after the Preamble) states:
The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
One of the legal issues now is whether Congress can, by statute, affect how this clause (Article I, Section 2, Clause 1) of the Constitution should be applied. Proponents of a statute giving Washington D.C. a vote in the House say that Congress has the requisite power under Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution:
The Congress shall have Power....To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States....
There are other pertinent constitutional provisions as well. The following words can be found in both Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the original unamended Constitution, as well as in Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment: "Representatives ... shall be apportioned among the several States ... according to their respective Numbers...."
The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution is also relevant, since it gives D.C. residents a vote in presidential elections as "if it were a state." Likewise, Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1 is relevant, since it gives Congress power to grant statehood:
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
These are the primary pertinent parts of the Constitution. But, there are other constitutional provisions that may come into play (e.g. the provisions in Article V related to new amendments).
Legal arguments for and against
Professor Jonathan Turley testified on September 14, 2006 at House Judiciary Committee Hearings on this subject,[3] and Turley has also been quoted in the press:
Jonathan Turley, George Washington University law professor, believes the D.C. portion of the bill is "flagrantly unconstitutional" because the Constitution gives representation to "the people of the several states."
It would take a constitutional amendment to give the district unquestioned congressional and Senate representation, he said. Addressing it legislatively means another Congress could always revoke the voting privilege later.
"This is the equivalent of having Rosa Parks go to the middle of the bus, the ultimate compromise of principle," he said, referring to the civil rights protest Parks launched when she refused to move to the back of a bus, as required by Jim Crow laws. "Either D.C. residents are entitled to be full citizens or not."[4]
Other constitutional law experts have reached a different conclusion. For example, Patricia Wald and Kenneth Starr have written: "There is nothing in our Constitution's history or its fundamental principles suggesting that the Framers intended to deny the precious right to vote to those who live in the capital of the great democracy they founded."[5] Viet Dinh and Adam Charnes have also written on this subject, in favor of a statutorily granted House vote to the District.[6] Turley calls the analyses of Starr and Dinh, "uncharacteristically liberal interpretations of the text of Article I."[7]
Even in the absence of an enfranchising federal statute, some DC citizens have argued that their disenfranchisement is unconstitutional. However, that argument was rejected in the case of Adams v. Clinton,[8] in which the federal district court stated:
Such evidence as does exist ... indicates a contemporary understanding that residents of the District would not have a vote in the national Congress. At the New York ratifying convention, for example, Thomas Tredwell argued that "[t]he plan of the federal city, sir, departs from every principle of freedom . . . subjecting the inhabitants of that district to the exclusive legislation of Congress, in whose appointment they have no share or vote."
In contrast, there is no direct evidence that any of the framers believed that citizens of the federal district could have a vote in Congress. According to John Fortier, "Only the people of the states may choose members of Congress, and the District of Columbia is not a state. This language is confirmed again and again in the Constitution...."[9]
Even if a statute could legitimately give the District of Columbia a vote in only one of the two houses of Congress, questions would remain about the legitimacy of apportioning an additional representative for Utah. During his 2004 campaign for President, Senator John Kerry declined to support the DC Vote proposal: "I would not sign the congressman's bill into law because I think that bill would create all kinds of side issues about reapportionment across the country....Given the current games that have been played with that, I think that would be very dangerous."[10]
On January 24 of 2007, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a report[11] on this subject. According to the CRS, "it would appear likely that the Congress does not have authority to grant voting representation in the House of Representatives to the District."[12]
Legislation
Bills to give Washington D.C. full voting representation in the House of Representatives have been introduced in the past, and such a bill is also currently pending.
DC Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act of 2006
The "DC Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act of 2006"[13] was a bill to give the District of Columbia voting representation in the United States House of Representatives. The bill was proposed by Rep. Thomas M. Davis (R) of Virginia. Despite significant support,[14] the D.C. Voting Rights Act was not brought up for a vote in the 109th Congress.
District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007
On January 9, 2007, during the first week of the 110th Congress, the "DC Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act of 2007" (H.R. 328) was introduced in the House.[15] The bill would give the District of Columbia its first and only representative in the House of Representatives with full voting privileges.
The bill would eliminate the District's Congressional delegate seat, and permanently increase the size of the House by two seats, from 435 to 437. One new seat would go to the District of Columbia, and would almost certainly be occupied by a Democrat. Another new seat would go to Utah until the reapportionment due to take place following the 2010 census. Utah fell just a few hundred residents short of a fourth House seat in the 2000 census, and the Utah seat would almost certainly go to a Republican. Under Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, the number of Representatives may not exceed one per every 30,000 citizens; the current limit on the size of the House, 435, was set in 1929, and could in theory be raised to more than 10,000 based on the current United States population.
This change would thus have an impact on the structure of the Electoral College: while the District's number of electoral votes would remain unchanged, Utah would gain one additional elector. Since D.C. already has one electoral vote for the House member they would have if they were a state, and two electoral votes for the Senators they would have if they were a state, the bill would create only one more electoral vote, which would go to whichever state has the new seat. One additional electoral vote would also bring the total electoral votes to 539, making a tie impossible (unless an elector abstains or votes for a third party).
Under this DC Vote proposal, the District would be treated differently than a state for purposes of House representation. This is because the bill specifically states the number of House members from D.C. cannot exceed one, regardless of population. In the unlikely event that the population of D.C. approaches that of two districts, there may again be calls for a bill to give equal representation.
On March 13, H.R. 1433, titled "District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007"[16] passed the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform by a vote of 24-5.[17].
The House Judiciary Committee approved H.R. 1433 on March 15 by a vote of 21-13, whereupon the White House announced its opposition.[18] A new version of the bill - titled H.R. 1905 - was passed by the full House on April 19 by a vote of 241-177 and is now pending before the Senate.[19][20]
Footnotes
- ^ DCVote.org
- ^ Loughborough v. Blake, 18 U.S. 317 (1820) (also mentioning that "representation is not made the foundation of taxation").
- ^ House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution,Legislative Hearing on H.R. 5388, the "District of Columbia Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act of 2006
- ^ Johanna Neuman, Plan would give D.C. a House vote, Los Angeles Times (November 22, 2006)
- ^ Patricia Wald and Kenneth Starr, Congress Has the Authority to Do Right by D.C., Washington Post (September 17, 2006). Contra Matthew Franck, Hammering to Fit, National Review (September 18, 2006)(rebutting Wald and Starr)
- ^ Viet Dinh and Adam Charnes, The Authority of Congress to Enact Legislation to Provide the District of Columbia With Voting Representation in the House of Representatives (November 2004)
- ^ Jonathan Turley, Statement for the Record, Legislative Hearing on H.R. 5388, the "District of Columbia Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act of 2006 (September 14, 2006). It seems to be an uncharacteristic interpretation even for Wald. See Representation for the District of Columbia: Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the Comm. on the Judiciary, 95th Cong. 131 (1978) (statement of Assistant Attorney General Patricia M. Wald opining that "Article I was in part intended precisely to distinguish the Federal District from the States," and that "we do not believe that the word 'State' as used in Article I can fairly be construed to include the District under any theory of 'nominal statehood'").
- ^ Adams v. Clinton, 90 F. Supp. 2d 35 (2000) (citations omitted)
- ^ John Fortier, D.C. Colony, The Hill (May 17, 2006).
- ^ Spencer S. Hsu, Kerry Skeptical of Bill on D.C. Vote, Washington Post (May 15, 2004)
- ^ Thomas, Kenneth. CRS Report for Congress: The Constitutionality of Awarding the Delegate for the District of Columbia a Vote in the House of Representatives of the Committee of the Whole.
- ^ Sheridan, Mary Beth. "Report Questions Constitutionality of Giving D.C. a Vote," Washington Post (2007-02-13).
- ^ HR 5388, "District of Columbia Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act of 2006," 109th Congress, 2d Session
- ^ See Plan Would Bring House Vote to D.C., NPR (May 11, 2006)
- ^ Sheridan, Mary Beth (January 10, 2007). "Bill to Give D.C. a Full Vote Is Revived]". Washington Post.
- ^ H.R.1433, "District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007" (110th Congress)
- ^ Mary Beth Sheridan (March 14, 2007). "Bill to Give D.C. Full House Vote Advances". Washington Post. p. B01.
- ^ Struglinski, Suzanne & Bernick, Robert (March 16, 2007). "White House opposes bill that would give Utah a 4th congressional seat". Deseret News.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Mary Beth Sheridan (April 20, 2007). "House Approves A Full D.C. Seat: Biggest Step Toward Vote Since '70s; Bill Faces High Hurdles in the Senate". Washington Post. p. A01.
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External links
- History and powers of DC's Delegate to Congress
- Will, George. The Seat Congress Can't Offer, Washington Post (2007-03-29).
- Pence, Mike. Why I Voted for D.C. Representation in the House, Human Events (2007-03-17).
- Wall Street Journal. D.C. Con, editorial (2007-03-23).
- Los Angeles Times. Give D.C. representation, editorial (2007-03-23).