Then every American should be represented? Guam, American VI, etc. should all be states? It’s unfair to me that my parents chose to live on Howland Island so Howland Island should be state?
Yes, of course every American should be represented. I support DC statehood given the constraints of the Constitution*, but the Constitution itself is the real problem in that it vests control of the national institutions in the states rather than in the people directly. Every elected organ of the national government should be elected by all of the people, not just the ones whose local administrative divisions have some arbitrary level of sovereignty. It’s not necessary that a federation only enfranchise the people of the sovereign federal units; Australia and Canada both give representation to their territories, and so should we.
*I think it’s actually perfectly sensible to have a federal city. The federal government has a vested interest in there being an entity that provides municipal services, and supports the provision of goods and private services, separate from the strictures of any other sovereign. It’s not a dealbreaker (federal powers are on a much firmer foundation than they were 220 years ago) but it’s not a bad thing to have sitting on the shelf either. The DC Voting Rights Amendment was the perfect compromise, IMO, but the states callously rejected it, so oh well, I guess it’s statehood.
I don’t know about statehood. But they should have representatives in Congress and they should be able to vote for President.
If we would simply end the Electoral College, Howland Island residents’ votes would count as much as Wyoming residents, at least in presidential elections. One more argument for abolishing the EC, we’re getting there.
Being non-American I don’t really have a stake or say in this, but I wonder if it wouldn’t be a workable compromise to take the rural, non-coastal and Republican-leaning parts of California out of that state (which is an extremely populous state anyway) and admit them as a newly constituted state at the same time as DC. It would maintain the relative numerical strength of the two parties in the Senate, which would give the whole scheme more realistic chances of being approved; and surely the argument that people shouldn’t be deprived of political representation doesn’t speak against it. Of course the whole idea has the disadvantage that it would encroach upon the sovereignty of a state by breaking up that state; but since the advocates of DC statehoood like to emphasise that for them it’s representation of the people than matters more than the sovereignty of the states, that shouldn’t really be a counter-argument.
California would have to consent, what’s in it for them? They’re losing so much territory, and the population and taxes and federal funding and allocations that go with it, in order to preserve a national political balance?
~Max
You could present it to California as a take-it-or-leave-it option, part of a package deal that would also include DC statehood. If Democrats are so dedicated to achieving voting rights for the disenfranchised population of DC, and this is the way to achieve this, then I suppose there would be pressure within the Democratic Party on its Californian members (who, after all, govern California) to agree to the deal.
On a more general level, isn’t asking the question “California would have to consent, what’s in it for them?” just as legitimate as asking the question, in response to proposals for DC statehood: “Republicans would have to consent, what’s in it for them?”?
They are both legitimate questions.
~Max
This is a bug, not a feature, and the most compelling reason to admit D.C. as a state is to go some way to correcting it. The Senate gives disproportionate influence to states with tiny populations of rednecks, something originally seen a desirable feature to protect the rights of smaller states. But this disproportionate influence is now being utterly abused by the GOP to turn the Supreme Court into an anti-democratic regressive partisan political weapon.
No party is owed influence in a democracy. A political party gains influence by adopting policies that people want to vote for. If the GOP wants greater power, the correct way for it to happen is not to maintain a biased system of represenataion, it is for the GOP to change their policies, to stop being a party of reality-denying anti-democratic regressives, to become a party whose policies actually appeal to more voters.
Is that really true? If admitted as a state, DC would be the third-smallest state by population, just (slightly) ahead of Wyoming and Vermont. You wouldn’t be solving the problem of states with tiny populations; you’d just be adding one more of them. Sure, that state wouldn’t be populated by rednecks; but I think your personal preference for non-rednecks over rednecks (or rather, for the political opinions and voting behaviours of non-rednecks versus those of rednecks) is a sufficiently good reason to go along with that proposal.
ETA: This is @Riemann 2 posts up, but @schnitte doubling down just above while I was pontificating is well-timed. With due respect to both smart posters.
Exactly.
In a related vein, all the ideas here and in the PR statehood thread, the various packing the supreme court threads (and umpteen others both current and past) about maintaining “balance” by somehow creating an equal number of currently safe seats for the current two parties are deeply, deeply flawed.
Enshrining the details of 2020s political & population alignments in the structure of the country is dirt stupid. That’s exactly how you get to a Lebanese parliament, with some fraction of seats permanently reserved for certain religious or ethnic or political groups regardless of how things change over time.
Arguably, most of what’s wrong now in the USA now is an echo of the large number of small states formed early and the much smaller number of later, larger western states. And the vastly unequal populations there.
If you want your government responsible to your populace, then the populace must the the entity that wields the vote. Not obsolete boundaries enclosing arbitrary collections of mostly-empty dirt. And for damn sure not party alignments from 100 years ago.
Imagine the Whigs were reserved 40 seats in the Senate now because that compromise was arrived at in e.g. WAG 1830 & can’t be changed? That’s the kind of dumb sh** that occurs when we put “maintaining balance” anywhere on the political restructuring menu
What’s in it for the Republicans is doing something right for 700,000 of the nation’s citizens. You know, the common good. Republicans could also favor structural election reform, which would benefit all of the nation’s citizens and maybe, just maybe, they could win over more voters by being viewed as a party of fairness and opportunity instead of one of just mean-spirited partisanship dedicated to a poorly representative government.
On this I completely agree, but again, this principle can also be reversed: If Democrats want more Senate seats, they can adopt policies that make people in existing constituencies vote for them. Why push for the admission of a state that they know will consistently vote for Democrats in the foreseeable future? I know the claim of Democrats is that this is not the primary motivation for them pushing for this, but one can be skeptical about that. I have my doubts if the demands on the part of Democrats for the admission of DC would be as strong as they are if DC’s voting pattern weren’t what it is.
The Democrats didn’t suddenly start advocating DC statehood because of Trump. The cause has been around for decades, which means periods of Democratic majorities and minorities.
The arguments for statehood are powerful. DC residents do not have say in how the country works in many critical respects. That taxation without representation is inherently wrong should resonate, since it is literally the country’s founding principle.
That might not resonate as much with someone who isn’t American and neither might this. DC became a majority black city in 1960. Opposition to statehood increased around the same time. No one should ever underestimate or discount Republican racism as a force for retarding progress. Ironically, now that DC is gentrifying and whites may actually surpass blacks there may be more support for statehood in the future.
Comparing the unique case of DC to territories is a weak argument at best that ignores both the facts and the culture. Asking for compromise is too similar to the various compromises in the 1800s, all of them made to placate the South and keep slave states equal to free states in the Senate. That’s as horrible a precedent as can be found.
One could also make the argument that DC statehood would make representation in the federal government more closely approximate the political breakdown of the electorate as a whole. Democratic self interests in this issue simply overlap doing the right thing, making it more fair for the citizens of the District as well as the country at large.
Perhaps our opponents of DC statehood could drop the argument that this is helpful to Democrats and instead argue why it’s better for the country to deny said statehood. I’ve asked this question before and it seemed to cause some discomfort in opponents. Ask yourselves what reasons you have for denying equal representation besides partisanship.
I agree that this is not the ideal solution in principle. But, currently, the roughly 30% of regressives wield disproportionate influence, and they are actively abusing it to further undermine democracy in this country. Correcting the distortion by creating offsetting states with small blue populations to simply cancel out the undue power wielded in the Senate by small red states is all that we can do with a simple majority. The ideal solution might be more fundamental Constitutional reform that would require a supermajority. We can’t stand by and watch people with an explicitly anti-democratic agenda destroy the country just because the only short term solution we have is imperfect.
ETA: Double post.
I have no doubt that you feel you’re morally right in saying so, but in essence you’ve just confirmed that your real reason for demanding DC statehood is a partisan one: To add safe Democratic senate seats. It’s not at all about enfranchising DC voters; that’s just a means to your end, because DC happens to vote for the Democrats. If DC happened to vote Republican, you wouldn’t care about the disenfranchisement of voters there, no matter how much you emphasise that objective now. And to me, that’s kind of a dishonesty in the debate. You’re demanding something and back that demand with a purported reason that’s not your real motivation for demanding it. I know Republicans are guilty of the same sin, but I think Democrats deserve to have it pointed out to them that they’re not innocent of it either.
Sure. There are good arguments that it’s a fundamentally reasonable thing to do, but a primary motivation is certainly that it gives us two more Democratic senators. It’s pointless pretending that the latter isn’t also something we want. No argument of principle is going to make the GOP do anything but fight tooth and nail against it, and we really shouldn’t give a toss what the Republicans think about it. If we have the power to do we should absolutely do it, and not wring our hands about whether it’s the ideal solution. We’re on the side of good in an existential fight to save this country from evil, and we absolutely should not wring our hands about doing what we need to do to win, or this country will be destroyed.
Biden needs Toby Ziegler in the White House. So long as the indoctrination machine of the GOP spreads constant lies to their base they will continue to believe the lies and continue to hate, continues to support a political agenda that is destroying this country. They’ll like us when we win.
In fairness, it needs to be noted that the six New England states currently have 21 Democratic representatives (versus no Republicans) and 10 Democratic senators (plus two independents who caucus with them). That’s 33 electoral votes for an area with a population slightly bigger than Pennsylvania’s. To me, that’s just more of an argument for abolishing the EC.
You can suspect or even dismiss the motivations all you like and it doesn’t change the basic fact that Democratic interests coincide with better representation and Republicans’ interests don’t. Both sidesism doesn’t cancel this out.