Most Washingtonians know all too well that D.C. residents pay federal taxes, yet have limited representation on Capitol Hill. Hence, our “taxation without representation” license plates and ever-present bid for statehood.

For many, the continued contribution to federal coffers is one of the biggest arguments in favor of increased representation. An electronic billboard was placed outside the seat of D.C. government in 2009 to tally the amount of federal taxes the District pays while not having any say in how those tax dollars are spent.

A new poll finds, not-so-shockingly, that residents don’t love this whole disenfranchisement thing. Indeed, per this poll, commissioned by campaign of Nelson Rimensnyder, a Republican candidate for D.C. delegate, a vast majority of Washingtonians would prefer to be exempt from federal income taxation until Congress grants them the voting rights and representation that the 50 states have. Incidentally, residents of Puerto Rico and the other U.S. territories that don’t have representation don’t pay federal income taxes.

About 81 percent of the 759 Washingtonians who were polled agreed that D.C. residents should be exempt from federal taxes until they get statehood. About 14 percent disagreed, and 6 percent were undecided. (Yes, this adds up to 101 percent, but there is also a 3.6 percent margin of error.) Support for the “No Vote No Tax” was highest in Wards 7, with 91 percent supporting it, and 8, with 90 percent.

The D.C. GOP is running a slate of three candidates this November, including Rimensnyder, who is challenging longtime incumbent Eleanor Holmes Norton for her House of Representatives delegate seat. Would you be surprised to learn that Rimensnyder has also made “No Vote No Tax” a huge part of his campaign?

This isn’t Rimensnyder’s first rodeo. A longtime advocate of “No Vote No Tax,” he ran against Norton in 2014 (she got nearly 84 percent of the vote to his almost 7 percent), and has also run twice for shadow senator, to no avail.

“Give us representation or give us our taxes back,” says Rimensnyder. “It’s a grievance we all share.” He says pushing for an initiative like this would put a spotlight on D.C.’s lack of voting rights. “You talk taxes, I think that gets the attention of a lot of people in the media and otherwise,” he says. “I don’t understand why she’s not playing this card.”

Norton explains over email that “there is no free lunch or tax-free way to voting rights and statehood … If D.C. were exempt from federal income taxes, the District would no longer receive the same per capita federal funding that the states receive.  To offset the loss in federal funding, D.C. would have to dramatically raise local taxes. There is no constitutional two-step process to statehood whereby D.C. stops paying federal taxes while getting all the federal funding it now receives, pending statehood.”

She didn’t always feel this way. In 2001, she sponsored a no-tax resolution, which had more bipartisan support than any of her more recent efforts to help D.C. achieve full voting rights. But Norton has since argued that the end-goal isn’t ending federal taxes for D.C. residents, it’s statehood, and the former would weaken the argument for the latter.

Indeed, Texas Representative Louie Gohmert, a Republican who has kept alive the “No Vote No Tax” fight on the Hill, basically says as much in a 2009 release. “It seems to me only fitting and just that D.C. residents should be treated as all other Americans,” Gohmert said. “They should either have congressional representation with full voting rights (which requires a Constitutional Amendment for D.C.), or they should be exempted from paying federal income tax.” He has opted for the second choice.

DC GOP poll by Rachel Kurzius on Scribd

This post has been updated to reflect that the poll was commissioned by the Rimensnyder campaign, though the D.C. GOP was supportive of it.