Vote? Retrocession? No Taxes? A Voting Rights Primer
With this week's congressional subcommittee hearing on legislation that would grant the District a voting seat in the House, we've again started what has become something of a bi-annual tradition for D.C. residents. We complain, Congress goes through the motions on a piece of legislation aimed at correcting a 200-year-old injustice that has left the city's 600,000 residents without a voting member in Congress, we become hopeful, and eventually Congress ends up not doing anything. Rinse and repeat and you've got a day in the life of a disenfranchised D.C. resident. Of course, it's a new day in Washington, and with a solidly Democratic Congress and a sympathetic president, our chances at getting something are better than ever.
Regardless, Tuesday's hearing dredged up the usual opposition and alternatives to the current proposal. There was talk of exempting the District from federal taxes, retrocession to Maryland, and going for full statehood. We've heard this all before, but for those of you who are newer to the city, this is all news. Click on through for our handy primer on the current debate over D.C. voting rights.
Where We Are Now: The House is currently considering legislation that would grant D.C. a full voting seat in that chamber, as well as give Utah an additional seat. The legislation was originally crafted a few years back by now retired Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) and D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton as a bi-partisan compromise. Seeing that statehood was a non-starter, Davis and Norton offered to balance the District's presumed Democratic seat with one for solidly Republican Utah, which is slated to get an additional seat anyhow once re-apportionment of the House's seats is completed in 2010. Opponents call the plan unconstitutional because only states are allowed seats in the House; proponents claim that the Constitution grants Congress authority over the District to make this sort of change. The House passed the measure in early 2007, only to see the Senate filibuster it to death. An identical bill was introduced earlier this month at the start of the new legislative session.
What About Statehood?: The last time statehood was seriously considered was in the mid-1980s, when a constitutional amendment to create "New Columbia" failed when not enough states opted to ratify it. Since then, statehood has been more a rallying cry than a reality. D.C. voting rights activists are somewhat evenly split over the existing legislation before Congress. The pragmatic wing of the movement argues that something is better than nothing, while the idealist wing retorts that a token remedy to a historic injustice is no remedy at all. The pragmatists see a voting seat as but one step toward statehood; the idealists fear that it will distract from the larger cause of statehood.
Washington, MD: So if getting statehood is practically impossible and gaining just one voting seat in the House is insulting, is there a workable alternative? Sure -- just become part of Maryland. The idea of retroceding the non-federal parts of the District to Maryland has some historical precedent. The District was originally carved out from parts of Maryland and Virginia, and in 1847 Arlington County and parts of Alexandria were ceded back to the commonwealth. (Yes, Arlington, you could have been part of the way awesome District had you said something back then.) Retrocession advocates argue that Congress should just repeat the process, but this time give what's left back to Maryland. Of course, the idea sounds great if you don't actually ask Maryland whether they want us -- or if we want to be part of them. So far none of Maryland's power-brokers have looked too kindly upon the idea (would they really want the urban challenges of both Baltimore and the District to contend with?), and District residents usually respond by pointing out that 200 years of history has given the city a distinct identity that can't simply be rolled into another state. Crabs and half-smokes just can't co-exist, people.
No Representation and No Taxes: One of our biggest gripes is that even though we don't get a voting representative, we're still forced to pay taxes -- and high ones. The District is second only to Connecticut in the amount residents pay to the federal government every year. For a country founded on the rallying cry of "No Taxation without Representation," it's an awkward state of affairs, especially when you consider that D.C. residents are now legally entitled to have guns. Over-taxed, under-represented and well-armed is not a good mix. The remedy? Exempt D.C. residents from paying federal taxes. It sounds like a great idea, but it's not so much a response to an injustice as it is a bribe for us to stop complaining about it. It's also never going to happen. As Eleanor Holmes Norton noted after Rep. Louie Gohmert declared he would introduce legislation that would grant District residents tax-exempt status at this week's hearing, she's tried pushing this before, and gotten absolutely nowhere.
The Status Quo: Very few people actually argue that the way things are is just fine. National polls on the issue find that when Americans are informed about the District's lack of voting rights, they're in favor of fixing the problem by a large majority. Even so, we've been stuck in the same cycle of complain, debate, hope and fail for decades. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with Washington knows that meaningful change is painfully slow to pass, and most new laws end up as watered down, ineffective shells of their original selves thanks to amendments and compromises. Even with Mr. Change now occupying the White House, leaders of the voting rights movement have been busy reminding us that we shouldn't get our hopes up for the current legislation to pass very quickly. There are other, more pressing matters to worry about. We've been fine the way we are this whole time, after all, right?
Despite our cynicism, though, this congressional session is generally seen as the best chance we've ever had to gain any kind of voting representation. Stay tuned to DCist, where we'll be keeping track of every step along the way.