Sure, but I’m not sure why. What is more fair about making DC become a part of Maryland, having it be absorbed into a state it was never a part of? Why shouldn’t isn’t the fair thing to do to treat it like any other unincorporated territory of the United States, making it into a territory?
We even already have precedent that it should be treated like a state. For the purposes of the Electoral College, it acts like it has two senators and one representative, just like a small state.
Plus, there’s the fact that the current system was designed in such a way to favor more rural states, so allowing a small urban state adds more balance–making it more fair. Then there’s how the current system requires Democrats to outperform the Republicans by 2% or so to win the presidency–which is unfair.
Then you talk about how you think it would be more fair to combine some states, which is you admitting the current system is unfairly biased. So why not fix that by biasing it the other way a bit?
To me, it definitely seems like there are much better arguments that making DC a state actually makes things more fair, not less.
That is incorrect. As puzzlegal noted that is exactly where the land D.C. now occupies came from. That may or may not be relevant to the situation now, but it did in fact start as a chunk of Maryland.
DC is neatly almost exactly the size of one congressional district. They should certainly get that. And, as others have suggested, it’s larger than a bunch of the empty western states.
(All sizes based on population, which really ought to matter more than land in these matters.)
If a territory or district has more population than an existing state, that’s a compelling argument that it should qualify for statehood. What’s good enough for Wyoming ought to be good enough for DC or Puerto Rico. Government should represent people, not some arbitrarily drawn map abstraction.
I’d also support collapsing all of those tiny sparse Western states into one state with a population more comparable to “real” states, but that’s not happening, so statehood for DC and PR it must be.
Other than really not wanting a second Washington State I don’t have strong feelings about what the proposed state should be called, but I do feel strongly that the common name* for it should be a maximum of two words, (or three only if they decide on District of Columbia). “State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth” is much too long.
it could include a seldom used, official “Common wealth of” appellation if necessary. Though these days “and Providence Plantations” is right out.
Or KFC. But that’s exactly what I proposed way upthread, that it officially doesn’t have to stand for anything, or we just call it “DC” in most printed references to the state, even though it technically is “Douglass Commonwealth,” much like we used “Rhode Island” for “Rhode Island and Providence Planations.” I don’t see any issue with this, and I think a form that preserves the “DC” postal abbreviation is the most elegant solution.