The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation yesterday to give D.C. one full voting representative in the House; it still needs to be approved by the Senate. Story here. Advocacy site here. Bush has threatened to veto it; the WH position is that the Act is unconstitutional, D.C. not being a state.
Is it unconstitutional?
Will the Senate approve it?
If so, will W veto it?
If he does, what then?
On the face of it, the Constitution seems pretty clear and unambiguous: it says that all legislative powers shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives, and that the House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states.
It seems to me that if you pass a law changing that requirement, it would be unconstitutional. To change it, you need to amendment the Constitution.
I’m as pro-DC voting rights as anyone, and I have heard the arguments, but I just don’t agree with those who think that Congress’s plenary power over DC allows it to disregard the Constitution’s provision that members of the House shall be elected by the people of the states. I think it is pretty well established that the Framers, for reasons I consider really dumb, were afraid of DC being treated like a state.
There vote on the bill was 241-177, 50 votes short of the necessary 2/3 to override a veto. I wonder how many of those 177 would switch their votes if DC voting rights were to be instituted in an appropriate way, that is, by Constitutional amendment?
It strikes me that between this thread and the retrocession thread, we’ve covered the waterfront.
If D.C. is a state, then Congress can give it a vote in the House.
If D.C. isn’t a state, then Article IV, Section 3 doesn’t block retrocession to Maryland.
And if Maryland didn’t want D.C. back, then Congress could retrocede most of D.C. to a territorial government formed under Congressional auspices, which territory could apply for statehood.
Even if they did, only a handful of states ratified, the last time we tried something similar. I doubt we’d have more success this time.
Of course, options 1 and 3 would require also giving D.C. two votes in the Senate.
A point everyone is missing: in 1789, we’d become convinced of the need for a stronger national government by the events of the previous decade. But the prevailing attitude was that New York, Georgia, et al. were states in the European sense – seats of sovereignty which could accord parts of that sovereignty to a federation, in the same sense that Bavaria, Saxony, Oldenbourg, etc. had done to the Holy Roman Empire, and Uri, Zurich, and so on to the Confoederatio Helvetica. The intent was not to keep D.C. citizens from having the perquisites of statehood, but to accord to the newly formed Federal government a place where it wouldn’t have to get local approval to run its own affairs. Consider how Lincoln raised an Army for the Civil War: he asked every state governor to call up and build up its militia. D.C. was intended to be a small area where the Federal government had complete sovereignty, not limited sovereignty on those few powers delegated by the states, so that it could actually do its job without clearing every step past a state governor and legislature.
Beyond that, we’re engaging in constitutional speculation. And IMO, a law (amendment if Bricker thinks that textual literalism will require it) providing that Congress retains absolute sovereignty over the District but that its inhabitants shall be treated in every other way identically to those of a state, including the right to elect Presidential
Electors, Senators, and Representatives in proportion to the population, to assume those perquisites associated with normal state and local government which do not conflict with Congress’s right to provide for Federal government needs, etc., would be completely in accord with the principles this nation was founded on.
Case in point: When Congress – the Articles of Confederation Congress, I believe – was still meeting in Philadelphia, members’ lives were put in danger when Continental Army soldiers rioted for their back pay – and the governor of Pennsylvania did not send in the state militia to protect them, and they couldn’t make him. They wanted to avoid such a situation arising again.
Clearly unconstitutional. Not even really worth debating. The Dems are pushing the issue simply as a wedge to make them look good, since they know such a law, if passed, would be declared unconstitutional by the SCotUS.
The Senate will not pass the measure; it will be filibustered if need be by one or two senators who strongly disagree that the measure is constitutional.
The current president will veto it. He has said he will, and trust me that the Republicans have no intention of letting the Dems have another easy vote in the House, even if it means a possible Republican vote from Utah.
The Congress will not have the votes to override.
It’s all kind of silly. I’ve stated in the past that Congress isn’t even capable of offering non-voting membership to non-states. I think no one bothers to challenge it because they understand that, in the current situation, the denial of representation to the residents of D.C. is not fair. But if you want to change that, change it properly. Put up a Constitutional amendment and get it passed.
Except this time, we’d make them understand… with extreme prejudice!
Well, there were a few reasons for it, none of them very “dumb” in my opinion. All 13 states had been colonies with a strong degree of sovereignty from the crown prior to the Revolution. They had never really surrendered any bit of their sovereignty to the other 12 colonies, and were completely, legally, independent of them. Thus, when the new country was formed you had 13 States which were in a situation not dissimilar to that of the German States prior to the unification of Germany in 1871. These were all loosely affiliated States which were wary of one another and wary of one State becoming too powerful.
They had no idea what things were going to be like, what government was going to be like, they’d never done anything like this before. During the years when the Articles of Confederation governed our country, they noticed several problems arising from the fact that the Federal government didn’t possess any actual sovereignty anywhere in the country. They were vulnerable to the machinations of the State governor and legislature in whichever State they resided in. Not just for protection from rioters, but even for housing and et cetera. Imagine if we had kept the U.S. Capital in Philadelphia, and kept it part of a sovereign State (Pennsylvania.) It’d be easy for Pennsylvania political leaders who are not nationally elected to have a big influence over the workings of the Federal government. Especially under the Articles of Confederation and the pre-Civil War Constitution, when the Federal government’s power in general was weak and it would only questionably be able to deal with such problems.
Likewise, the other 12 States were worried about this too, they were afraid if the Federal capital was in one specific State, that State would be seen as more important than the other 12. Virginians would be jealous of Pennsylvanians having the Federal capital, as would New Yorkers and every one else. Moving the capital to a reasonably central location and then separating it from any sovereign State was actually a very sound decision.
The issue with voting rights wasn’t that significant back then. While people already lived in the area that became the district (in smaller towns like Alexandria and Georgetown), by and large it wasn’t really intended that D.C. become a metropolis with hundreds of thousands of permanent residents.
Not to mention that, at the time of the founding of the country, there were relatively limited numbers of people who were actually allowed to vote. So disenfranchisement wasn’t quite the bugaboo that it is today.
The argument in favor of the constitutionality of DC representation is that courts have applied other provisions of the constitution, which under a hyper-literal reading would apply only to states, to the District of Columbia. For example, [ul]Federal jurisdiction over suits “between Citizens of different States” extends to suits between citizens of DC and citizens of a state;[/ul][ul]The Sixth Amendment guarantee of a speedy and public jury trial in the state in which a crime is committed has been applied to DC;[/ul][ul]The Eleventh Amendment ban of suits against a state by “citizens of another State” has been extended to DC citizens;[/ul][ul]The power to regulate “commerce among the several States” has been extended to commerce between a state and DC.[/ul]I’m not convinced granting House representation to DC would be justified under these precedents, but the argument is worthy of more substantial refutation than “The Constitution says ‘state’, so you can’t do it.”