DC Voting Rights

By: Jacob Wasserman, Washington D.C. Contributor

Last month, people all across America celebrated the liberation of Tripoli, which will hopefully soon allow the residents of Libya’s capital to vote for their own fairly elected representatives. Meanwhile, however, the residents of our own nation’s capital are currently denied that same basic right to representation. This shameful injustice, a violation of the basic principles upon which the U.S. was founded, must end. More than just a local issue, this form of geographic discrimination should anger all Americans who believe in equality.

Unlike the inhabitants of the fifty states, Washingtonians cannot choose their own congresspeople and do not have a say in the laws that affect them. D.C. residents are subject to federal taxes, but cannot affect how they are spent, simply because of where they live. In fact, one of the first acts of the current House was to forbid the District’s delegate from even voting on procedural matters. This highly partisan campaign against D.C. voting rights ignores the truth — regardless of their location, 600,000 people cannot remain disenfranchised.

D.C. has a few options to gain equal voting rights. The most obvious, a constitutional amendment, would face the largest hurdles in order to pass. However, another, easier path to D.C. statehood exists. Congress could legally shrink the capital district to just a few government buildings and the Mall, allowing the rest of the city of Washington to become a state. This option would only require a majority of Congress, not a constitutional amendment.

Alternatively, D.C., again minus the major government buildings, could rejoin Maryland, a process called “retrocession.” Either way, only a few obstacles remain until voting equality is achieved for those in our nation’s capital.

The opponents of D.C. voting rights have tried every tactic to prevent self-governance. Congress has consistently forbidden the District from spending money on advocacy campaigns for voting representation. Worse, the April budget compromise impinged on the principle of “consent of the governed” by outlawing reproductive healthcare coverage through Medicaid in D.C. without consulting the local government or the people. And to top it all off, the Mayor and many city council members, along with forty-one others, were arrested for participating in a
voting rights protest!

“Taxation without representation” is not just a long-dead slogan from the Revolution. The same problem to which the Founding Fathers so strongly objected still faces the capital of our nation today. The very heart of American democracy is denied the right to democracy. All Americans must take a stand to ensure equal voting rights for everyone in our great nation, especially those living in our capital.