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Senate passes legislation to give DC Congressional vote
Jragghen
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Consitutional arguments are normally based on the following:
with focus being upon the word States - citizens of the District are not citizens of any individual state, as the District of Colombia is not a state. On the flipside, they do pay federal taxes, which members of US territories (who also do not get a vote), do not. Following with the attitude of "no taxation without representation," much of the argument in favor of having the district have a vote stem from the fact that they lack representation.
Given that this, having passed the Senate, is likely to become law, what do you think of the outcome?
WASHINGTON (AP) - The people of District of Columbia would get the vote in Congress the Founding Fathers denied them under legislation the Senate has approved.
The Senate legislation would give the district a vote in the House of Representatives. The bill offsets what is certain to be a gain for Democrats by adding one seat in Republican-leaning Utah.
The House is to take up the measure next week and is expected to pass it easily. More difficult could be a certain court challenge from opponents who say it is unconstitutional to give a vote to the nation's capital because it is not a state.
Consitutional arguments are normally based on the following:
Article I, Section 2 wrote:The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
with focus being upon the word States - citizens of the District are not citizens of any individual state, as the District of Colombia is not a state. On the flipside, they do pay federal taxes, which members of US territories (who also do not get a vote), do not. Following with the attitude of "no taxation without representation," much of the argument in favor of having the district have a vote stem from the fact that they lack representation.
Given that this, having passed the Senate, is likely to become law, what do you think of the outcome?
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If it is, it gets representation.
If it isn't, no more taxes.
Those seem to be the logical conclusions to me.
I'm sure there are a thousand more logical conclusions.
The only argument against this was a stupidly technical reading of the constitution that essentially ignored the entire point of the document in the first place.
It won't matter in a year - census will balance things out, but the district would keep their seat.
I would assume it's the Republican state closest to needing a new Rep based on the 2000 census. I think Utah is one that was likely to gain a seat in 2010 anyway.
Would have the added side bonus of ending the chance of electoral college ties.
The entire reason for D.C.'s creation was so that no one state houses the capital. Otherwise Philly or Richmond probably would have been the capital.
Really I don't see why this can't be solved simply as an issue of democratic representation.
That's pretty insane.
Although, to be fair, Wyoming only has one house district. The real win for them is in the Senate.
That's it. I'm going to start Gay Zion in Wyoming. All it will take is one city and BAM! two openly gay senators and a couple of congressmen.
"New Sodom"
Otherwise, while I think its certainly in the spirit of the Constitution and Declaration to give them Representation it seems it is clearly against the letter of the law
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
The advocates of this plan get around that by saying that the White House, the Capitol, the National Mall, and a few other buildings right there would be split off from DC proper and made their own non-state, with the rest of DC making the move the Maryland.
The main problem with this idea being that DC doesn't really care for the idea, and Maryland hates the idea, the later of which at least you can't fault since DC would completely dominate the combination.
Baltimore alone has more pop than DC.
I'd imagine that a legislator would be able to sue to have the representative from DC's vote disregarded.
That, and also this:
Also, am I reading this correctly that DC would be getting representation in the House but not in the Senate? Does that seem a little... inconsistent to anyone else?
If it's the same as previous bills attempting to get them representation I think it would require SCOTUS to rule on it immediately after becoming law as part of the legislation.
You are reading correctly, and yes, it seems a tad inconsistent.
No, because they aren't a state. That doesn't mean they shouldn't receive voting representation in the people's House, though.
The Republicans will never let DC have senators. Also, senators represent states rather than districts, so it makes more sense to give DC a house member than a senator (unless you were to actually make it a state itself).
Which is never going to happen. It'll be interesting to see what happens if DC grows to the point where they can have more than an at large Representative while some States aren't going to. The shitstorm that'll erupt is just going to be hilarious.
That's not how SCOTUS works. Someone needs to bring a suit in federal court first.
I'm pretty sure Congress can require Judicial Review of its laws should they so desire.
To be clear, I wasn't trying to argue against DC getting representation in the House. I was wondering aloud if they should also get it in the Senate.
The "Senators represent states not districts" argument would make more sense to me if it weren't for the 17th Amendment. Senators do represent states, but ultimately that means representing the people of those states. Apart from the fact that DC is not defined as a state, is there any reason it shouldn't get representation in both houses?
(Footnote: I'm posing this question purely from a philosophical perspective. I acknowledge that in practice the Republicans would strongly resist giving DC Senate representation.)
Also, Commonwealths.
If it's a major constitutional issue can't they hear it immediately?
It's not so simple. People live along Capitol hill. Either you end up with swiss cheese, or you are being selective on who gets representation.
I thought all the buildings lining the Mall were either administrative or museums. The two buildings behind the Capitol are SCOTUS and one of the buildings of the Library of Congress, and the areas around the White House and Ellipse are all Executive Office Buildings. The only people who 'live' there would be the First Family, and their legal residence is probably still in Chicago.
Now take Puerto Rico. It has no particularly special status in the Constitution; it's quite populous, but it is definitely not a state, and not under the control of Congress either. Thus, there really would be no justification for allowing its commissioners the full rights of representatives. That said, I really wish they'd give up on the independence thing, since it's never going to happen, and the sooner those guys give up, the sooner Puerto Rico can be a state and have its concerns met.
I don't know how much of it is the independence thing and how much is the "no federal taxes" thing.
Anyway I understand having DC separate. The idea was always not having any states meddling in federal business. And at the time the Constitution was signed competition between states was fierce.
And they want to keep Spanish as a primary language.
They enjoy their special status, and Independence is even less popular in Puerto Rico than the prospect of Statehood--in the referendums they hold, the outcome is always, in order from most popular to least, status quo, statehood, independence.