I’d say that some (even many) Democrats do care, as a matter of principle, but I agree that a substantial number probably support it because it is politically expedient to do so.
A big roadblock has appeared to DC statehood. Senator Joe Manchin, the conservative democrat representing West Virginia, has said that he feels a constitutional amendment would be required for statehood. No idea why he thinks this; we’ve created fifty states already without any amendment.
The other 50 states were not territory specifically set aside under a provision of the original Constitution to be a neutral area, outside of any state, to be the seat of the federal government. The other 50 states were not part of an amendment to the Constitution specifically giving that neutral, non-state, electoral votes for the President.
Neither is the District of Columbia. The Constitution just says that the United States will have a capital district. It gives no specifications over its location, its borders, or its size (other than setting a maximum size of ten square miles).
So there is no constitutional reason we cannot create a state out of the populated areas of the city as long as we leave the capital portion aside. We cut off a part of the District of Columbia in 1847 and nobody argued that was unconstitutional.
The 23rd Amendment says that the capital district is entitled to electors in presidential elections. This could be a problem if the capital district was shrunk down to a mostly unpopulated area around the Capitol and White House. But this is subject to Congress; they could simply enact a law saying no electors shall be appointed.
The 23rd Amendment states:
“The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct:…”
The District. It specifies a particular known area. That district is what the 23rd is referring to and not a rump one. This makes that particular piece of land different than the Dakotas or Puerto Rico.
Looks like Gerald Ford was illegitimate since the 25th Amendment only permitted the President (Lyndon Johnson) to nominate a replacement for Spiro Agnew, and the president was dead. Really, the Constitution is full of grants of power to specific presidents. You’d think they would have used more general language since “the” has such a consequential meaning.
The Q people can take solace in the fact that the presidential election results were not announced by the President of the Senate, Aaron Burr. Is Biden really the president (sorry, the president)? Who can say.
I almost completely missed the point of this and had to rethink it. Presidents will change every four or eight years. THE district has been the same since 1837. Congress can change the boundaries, but the idea was that there was a relatively large residential population, unconnected to a state, that gets at minimum three electoral votes—because if it was a state, it would get its own three electoral votes.
Making D.C. a state ignores that background understanding and reserving three electoral votes for an insular area with zero residents and zero electors makes the amendment an impossibility.
I don’t think we should give a rat’s ass about the founder’s intentions regarding statehood for DC. We can make our own decisions.
Does 1837 count as founders? How about 1960, when the 23rd seems to have been ratified?
If UltraVires’s post is correct then this problem solves itself. If the 23rd Amendment only refers to the current district having electors, then we can just give the majority of the district statehood. And we don’t have to worry about the remaining portion of the district because, according to UltraVires, the 23rd Amendment doesn’t apply to it.
For anyone curious, the plan to deal with the 23 amendment is to have the statehood act leave the district of columbia as the area with the white house, the capitol, and some monuments, museums and other buildings. In that act, that area would have 3 electoral votes. Then there would be a subsequent effort to repeal the 23rd amendment which if house dems are correct wouldn’t have a reason for GOP opposition. It seems like failure to repeal the 23rd would result in an invalidation of the law, there would just be these 3 electoral votes for the area around the capitol.
It’s very naive if they really think that (I suspect they know in their hearts that it wouldn’t work that way). There’s no reason to think that the 23rd Amendment won’t remain on the books for decades after statehood. I actually don’t think it particularly matters if the 23rd Amendment remains on the books as a dead letter, but it will remain there nevertheless in the very unlikely event that statehood happens. If anything, it will become an article of faith in GOP primaries that the Douglass Commonwealth is illegitimate and candidates will compete on just how far they’ll go to refuse to recognize it, with a sizeable faction in whichever house next has a Republican majority demanding that the member(s) from the new state not be seated.
My guess would be that if there was no strategic advantage or disadvantage for the GOP, they would oppose repealing the 23rd because they don’t want to acknowledge a loss, and you’re right that it might help them market to their voters.
I’m not really sure how things would go. Would the president’s family or white house/capitol staff try to register in the district? It might create a situation where the current president winds up always just taking the 3 votes. If the thinking is that that would favor Democrats I could see the GOP supporting an amendment. It’s also a weird situation because the GOP (or the Democrats for that matter) might not be unified and to get the numbers in congress and the state governments it would take overwhelming support I’d think.
Don’t care and don’t care. We’re grownups who should be able to make our own decisions about what is right for us now.
Evidently Mr. Manchin is unsatisfied with the constitutionality of doing that.
~Max
For a variety of reasons Manchin should be considered a fool. The first sentence of section 1 and all of section 2 of the amendment clearly put the authority in the hands of congress:
Section 1. The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct:
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
I also think the proposed act would be unconstitutional without first amending the constitution.
~Max
“In such a manner that the congress directs”. That’s an escape clause that can specify that the manner be impossible or mutually exclusive to any electors created by statehood. It’s really an awful amendment to start with just giving more authority over the district to the congress, and another reason to justify statehood.
You forgot the most important word.
~Max
True.
Whether or not the proposal moves forward is strictly a political question, to be decided by those empowered to, i.e. the Congress at the time the issue is brought forward. And may we be reminded, if the Senate does not act by New Year’s of 2023, we gotta start passage from the beginning again.
Whether or not there are constitutional issues at work is a valid subject of argumentation and debate to be had between those supporting or opposing it, but the decision is made by Congress and any challenge would be to SCOTUS, and they’ll almost certainly answer “sorry, dudes: Political Question”.
As mentioned earlier, the argument from the “pro-” side is that once the decision to admit is made, then there would be no problem because “obviously” (a) nobody would object to the depopulated enclave not submitting EVs at all, and (b) everyone would support immediately passing a repeal of the 23rd.
The political reality though is that it is not so “obviously” because that would be a tool to challenge the admission and especially the counting of the votes from the new polity – basically the conservative position will become, “sure, it’s admitted once the 23rd is repealed not before” now making it subject to a veto by all the other states, and this based on that DC is not just any other “territory” so Congress gets to treat it differently. It will really be a fascinating discussion.