This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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The DC Rep Thing

It got stopped in the Senate, but could one of my lawyer readers (you know who you are) explain to me the argument for how what they were proposing to do was possibly constitutional? Isn’t Article I, Section 2 as amended by Amendment XIV Section 2 fairly clear that it is STATES that have representation?

Is the argument based on Article I, Section 5? “Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members”? If that is the case it seems to open up the possibility of legislation adding Representatives for all sorts of other non-State entities. And that seems like it could be an absolutely horrible can of worms to get in to.

There is definitely a strong argument that people who live in DC should have representation. But it also seems clear (to me anyway) that an attempt to do this by statute is unconstitutional. A constitutional amendment, retrocession of most or all of DC to Maryland, or making DC a state all seem like options that WOULD be constitutional, but not this. The fact that a majority of both houses supported this and it was only stopped by filibuster in the Senate scares me. But then again, most legislation coming out of the congress scares me.

(For the record, retrocession is the only one of the options I would personally support. It is the ONLY one of the options that makes sense to me and does not seem to set bad precedents. I would leave a small federal district with no legal residents for the capital mall and surrounding federal buildings. But of the options it seems to have almost no political support and has not been looked at seriously in many years. )

4 comments to The DC Rep Thing

  • Abulsme

    I should have of course said lawers or future lawyers. :-)

  • Abulsme

    Or perhaps lawyers or future lawyers.

    I’m not sure what a lawer is.

  • cynthia

    no retrocession. maryland sucks. i cant believe you wanna get rid of dc! i love dc!

  • Abulsme

    All of the other options to give representation are objectionable in various ways.

    Lets see… the kind of thing they tried in congress this last week seems clearly unconstitutional, that should stop it at its face.

    A constitutional amendment to just say something like “treat DC as a state”, much like the 23rd Amendment did for electoral votes would be legal, but stupid… just as the 23rd Amendment itself was… if you want to make it a State, make it a state, but don’t but half-ass special case situations into the constitution.

    Making DC an actual state is probably the least objectionable of the options other than Retrosession, but the “city that wants to be a state” thing sets a bad precident for the future. Yes though, DC does indeed have a bigger population than Wyoming, so this might not be THAT bad given that DC is not in a state at the moment. So there could be some argument that it would not set a precidednt for New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and all 32 or so cities with populations larger than Wyoming wanting to become states too. (Welcome to the grand state of Tucson!!)

    Also with the becoming a state thing, would be the whole “pairing of states” thing that has been normal for that process… that is, you can’t get the political approval to add a new state unless you add them in pairs… pre-civil war that meant slave and non-slave. These days it would be red state / blue state, so you’d need a new heavily Republican state to balance the heavily Democratic state of “New Columbia” or whatever they would name DC as a state.

    Retrocession just seems to make more sense to me…

    Keep in mind of course that a Maryland that included DC would not look very much like the existing Maryland. Population wise the former DC would be about 10% of the new combined entity.

    (I actually thought that number would be higher, but then I looked the population numbers up.)

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