D.C. Vote Unconstitutional:
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My guess is that certain politicians wanted to be both for and against the DC vote.
Perfect handle for posting that response :)
Personally, I'm of the opinion that most residential areas of DC should be returned Maryland. If I ever find a politician that listens to me, I'll be sure to let you know.
So, I don't think any transfer of DC to Maryland and/or Virginia would be wise.
I think you misread New World Dan's suggestion. He's referring, I believe, to the residential-only areas primarily of NW (and presumably much of NE and SE as well) -- areas that have little if anything to do with the federal government itself. If those areas become "Maryland" rather than "DC," while the core federal government areas of DC remain "DC," then there is no problem with the nation's capital being subject to a state's jurisdiction.
The feds would still exercise exclusive JD over the district -- it would simply be much less than ten miles square (as it already has been reduced, in giving most of SW back to Virginia).
The nation's capital was never intended to be a large metropolitan area with a substantial population. The poster suggested returning the residential areas to Maryland, as they were to Virginia. DC can keep Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court etc.
Judging solely from the excerpt, it appears that they made the same mistake that the lower courts in NATIONAL MUT. INS. CO. OF DIST. OF COL. V. TIDEWATER TRANSFER CO. made; namely, they did not look to Congress's other powers. In Tidewater, the lower courts had found legislation allowing D.C. residents to sue in federal courts under diversity jurisdiction unconstitutional because the Constitution limits the Article III jurisdiction to cases between citizens of different states, and D.C. isn't a state. But the Supreme Court reversed, noting that Congress has plenary power over D.C., which includes the power to provide its citizens a remedy comperable to federal diversity jurisdiction.
The CRS report says that the power to govern D.C. does not include the power "sufficient to effectuate structural changes to the federal government," but ignores Art. I, Sec. 5, cl. 2, which says that "Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings." If the House wants to adopt a rule that even votes are decided by a flip of the coin, or by Bozo the Clown, it can do so. Likewise, it can call an elected representative from D.C. a congressperson and let that person have a vote.
I too thought that Congress's power to set its own rules could govern here, especially as I can see no text in the Constitution which specifies the vote required to pass a bill. (There is text about the vote required to override a veto, but not for initial passage.)
The CRS report considered this, but quoted the decision in Michel v. Anderson, in the Court of Appeals for DC, as saying that the Constitution "precludes the House from bestowing the characteristics of membership on someone other than those 'chosen every second Year by the People of the several States.'"
I hope that the next time the Republicans have control of Congress they finally put an end to these dangerous dimocrat shennanigans by returning to Maryland, as they earlier returned to Virginia, the part of DC that Maryland donated to the federal government in 1784(?). One benmefit would be finally removing that obnoxious twit, Eleanor Norton Holmes, from the national scene.
Instead of seeking statehood, the citizenry of the District should be freed from paying federal taxes as their federal rights are less. Do away with the federal income tax on individuals--and perhaps corporations--and the District could raise its already substantial income tax to a 30% level. Taxpayers would still get a deal out of it and DC could have some real money in its budget.
Expand it to corporations and you'd see places like Delaware experiencing a dramatic departure of companies to friendlier climes.
Sure, this would effect dramatic demographic change, too. But that's okay by me. Cities and their residents change over time....
Disclosure: I do not own any DC real estate, though if my plan were to be effected, I'd hock everything I own to get some.
If one truly cares about the voting rights of DC residents, if retrocession is an impossibility, and if granting a vote to DC otherwise is unconstitutional, then there may be only one solution: Congress could exercise eminent domain over the entirety of Washington DC, turn the whole thing into a government office park, and kick everyone out. Presumably the (former) residents would move to other areas of the United States and would gain congressional representation thereby, and the voting problem of DC would disappear forever. A side benefit would be that the government would find itself with plenty of office space, so it could move many of the departments that have decamped to Maryland and Virginia back into the District; the savings from leaving all of those rentals in NoVA and Maryland would help somewhat with the cost of exercising eminent domain over the city.
Anyone have any clue as to the fair market value of all of the private land in DC?
As for retrocession... I live in Maryland. I don't think we would be particularly interested in increasing the state's population by 10%, and it's poverty and law enforcement problems by 40% overnight. On the plus side, a lot of the D.C. schools are grim enough that they could double as jails, which would eliminate overcrowding problems at Jessup. Maybe we just put the less violent offenders on work-release, and let them come home to the
schoolsjails at night...I'm only half joking about this. Even with reasonable fiscal management, D.C. has enormous problems, and no self-respecting / self-serving Maryland politician is going to be willing to take it on.
And I don't think Seattle would appreciate you bringing all that excess baggage up there. It is far too nice a place to be smote with the likes of our Federales... :-)
Plus, if it became part of Indiana, everyone would be nicer.
So it's not clear why it should be treated like a state when it comes to representation in the Senate (meaning it would receive 2 senators).
Why should the District, which has less than 0.2 percent of the nation's population, receive 2 percent of the senate (that is, 2 senators out of 102?)?
That's 10 times what it would be entitled to based on population alone.
It is already inequitable that underpopulated states like Wyoming and Vermont receive just as many senators as populous states like California and New York. But that inequity, unfortunately, can't be changed, since the constitution mandates that the constitution can't be amended to dilute a state's equal representation in the Senate.
But the District is not a state, so, thankfully, we don't have to put up with that unfair result with respect to the District.
Indeed, we don't have to give D.C. any senators at all.
A stronger argument could be made that District residents should receive a representative in the House.
But even that is arguable. The District has 400,000 fewer people than Montana, which only has one representative in the House. The District's population is smaller than the size of the typical House district.
Why should the District also receive one representative, when its population is similar to cities like Las Vegas and El Paso, which don't have a representative all to themselves (they have to share their representative with surrounding suburbs)?
AppSocRes: I'm sorry, but your comment was disqualified because of your use of the term "dimocrat." Please try again. You might want to check the co-sponsor of one of the Bills, Tom Davis, R-Va.
The new residents of Maryland would get representation in Congress. And, citizens of the smaller DC would get greater power per-person in presidential elections, thus further compensating for their lack of representation in Congress.
He wouldn't have done that if he'd seen the clip in which she pwned Stephen Colbert.
There is no obligation to live in the District to retain your job unless you happen to work for parts of the District government. A move of less than 10 miles' distance--perhaps to 'Nuclear Free Takoma Park?--would rectify any injustice perceived in the lack of certain voting privileges.
Personally I blame Carrier. I think it was inspired for the founders to put DC in the center of a swamp in which no one in their right mind would wish to stay year round. Then somone invented air conditioning...
Even more compelling, ask someone who has actually gotten a congressman to help them with a problem. D.C. residents simply don't have that option.
What does Eleanor Holmes Norton do then? Sit around and eat doughnuts all day? Providing that service is precisely her job.
Telling DC residents to "just move" -- ha, ha. Is the US federal government going to build them housing in Maryland somewhere?
The CRS report: I can't assess the quality of the reasoning in detail, and the Post report suggests that there are a number of legal scholars who would disagree. I would think that as neither Tidewater nor Michel would be directly on point, as DJR suggests, as neither involved cases where Congress tried to pass statutes or rules that fundamentally altered the effective structure of Congress. But that doesn't mean that no attention should be paid to the limits on Congressional power stated in those decisions.
I agree with those who think that adding DC's residents to Maryland would be the best solution, though I could understand why Maryland might not care for it. While it might require a constitutional amendment, why not leave DC separate from Maryland, but treat it as part of Maryland for Congressional representation?
And bythe way, people can "just move" they do it all the time. Making your own choices is the american way. I understand that the more left leaning commenters feel that the nanny government should decide and pay for everything because their "constiuents" are entirely incompetent and unable, through no fault of their own, of course. However, in a society founded on the idea people have freedoms to do as they like, generally as long as they do not infringe on the persons of others. Along with that is the obligation to get yourself out of whatever trouble you have gotten yourself into, and to suffer with your own weaknesses, as hard as that may be to say and feel. Byt he same token, instead of volunteering me and my hard earned income (ie taxes) to fix things up for opthers, get off the keyboard go to Washington, give your time and money to move people to a place with representation.
Whoever said DC should be an 'office park' is prbably pretty close to the truth. I imagine the persons who developed it envisioned a town full of government offices and at most, office workers. Not the general metropolis now found there.
Sorry, rant over.
That just begs the question of whether being represented in Congress is the sort of fundamental right that should apply everywhere or some fact of nature like the weather. People could "just move" away from a state which had cancelled the Bill of Rights, too, but that's not typically thought to be a sufficient remedy.
They'd all pick Virginia.
I've seen Viet Dinh's paper claiming that such legislation would be constitutional. All I can say is that any of the conservative intelligencia that spends his or her time fawning over judicial appoibntments that will never happen should read that paper before forming a judge-crush on Mr. Dinh.
Also, JohnO, do you have a cite for that Dinh paper? I'd like to give it a look.
I do not see DC residents' 'right' to vote as fundamental. All adults have--or have available to them--knowledge of the disability that comes with living in DC. It's not some sudden, overnight disenfranchisement: it's been the rule since DC was formed. If one doesn't like that, there are options. Many exercise those options when they grow to dislike other aspects of the District like crime, poor schools, unresponsive local government. It's the American way in a far more fundamental manner than whether they need a Constitutional amendment in order to vote.
To me the ideal situation is if somehow DC voters could vote in Maryland/Virgina congressional and senatorial elections.
However, Ms. Holmes has wrong-headedly made herself the longstanding and relatively useless figurehead for a very bad and purely partisan attempt to subvert the Constitution. I can't think of a word to describe someone who has so poorly utilized her obvious talents.
D.C. has a special purpose as a federal district. If they think it should be different, then get the Constitution changed.
And we all know why Republicans want Utah to have an extra seat. That's why the two issues have been combined.
IMO, this sort of reasoning is silly. In the long run, nobody knows how voting patterns will shift. 60 years ago, DC votes would have been reliably Republican. Nobody knows which party will benefit in the long run in either Utah or DC. If it's the right thing to do (and it seems to be in both cases), then letting partisanship interfere would be discreditable, to say the least.
I'm not commenting on the Constitutional issue here, just the policy question.
We don't want 'em.
As for whether DC will stay Democratic, what percentage of large, urban areas vote Republican? And if you mean merely that partisan alignment might shift (in the way that Democrat meant something different in the 1950s South), the basic political views persist -- predominately "conservative" Utahns have different interests than predominately "liberal" urban DCites.
Politics in Washington runs on a two-year cycle. Very few politicians care about the "long run".
The Senate issue is obviously problematic, but we can address each issue on its own merits. As Rick said in Casablanca:
"Heinze: Can you imagine us in London?
Rick: When you get there, ask me."
First, by virtue of the fact that so many of them have access to power centers in the federal government, they enjoy a kind of "virtual" representation that those outside D.C. lack. Your average resident of Gary, Indiana doesn't work for a senator, the Secretary of the Navy, the Brookings Institution, and so on.
Second, a lot of these people keep voting absentee in their home states. Even "Hill rats," (i.e., people who have worked on the Hill for a long, long time) still seem to identify somewhere other than D.C. as their home. You would be amazed at the number of out-of-state plates you see in the Hill employee parking lots.
I ultimately find these justifications unconvincing, however. Why? They don't apply to that other D.C., the one that doesn't get invited to Georgetown dinner parties, but that does the cooking and cleaning for those who do. The underclass in D.C. has its problems, but they are entitled to representation, and they're not getting it.
Several points.
The CRS lawyers write, edit and publish the Constitution Annotated available on line at Thomas at loc.gov., so they know constitution. A Report is reviewed and issued as the opinion of the Service, not of an individual.
To all the people who continue to suggest retrocession, please note that it was never formally ruled on by the Supreme Court, but the return of Alexandria to Virginia could not take place until the Virginia legislature approved it in 1846. Surveys show that only 20 per cent in Maryland would approve, so please note that it is not a viable option.
Hans Bader, please note that the inequity in the Senate can be remedied by Constitutional amendment. No state can be deprived of equal suffrage, but the Senate as a whole could have its duties removed, with only ceremonial tasks left, like the House of Lords. So do not say nothing can be done about it.
Also, Hans Bader, please give a principled reason why DC should have no representation at all.
To the folks who say people chose to live in DC and have no one to blame but themselves, please note that when the colonists in 1776 objected to taxation without representation in the British Parliament, they also had chosen to live in the colonies. They chose to leave England where they had representation. Your view is that if they wanted representation, they should have just moved somewhere else or back to England. The Founders of our Nation had principles that differed from yours.
By the way, just when was the Declaration of Independence repealed? It said that QUOTE Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Governed. UNQUOTE
Please explain exactly how the principle of the consent of the governed applies to the District of Columbia.
While you are at it, please explain why we fought a war and made Iraq write a constitution that grants the right to vote in both houses of its parliament to all the citizens of its capitol, while we deny the right in our own capitol.
JohnO is correct, the 14th Amendment would trump any attempt to rely on the District Clause, because Reps can only be apportioned to states.
The proposed statute also would confound the operation of the 12th amendment, if that dread day ever comes, because it is not clear that DC could vote if an election is thrown into the House.
Everyone should read the District clause itself again, because all it says is that Congress has power to exercise exclusive legislation in all case whatsoever over such district. It sure has the power to legislate courts to resolve disputes between citizens of DC and the states, and since the clause is national in scope, it could create those courts all over the country. The Supreme Court let it assign those cases to the Article III courts, maybe to streamline the administration of justice.
But how do you get from thatjurisdictional housekeeping to creating reps for districts, territories, military base, enclaves and Guantanamo Bay?
And the appeals to the authorities! Ken Starr? Does the word impeachment ring a bell? Judge Wald favors the bill, but testified in 1978 that a constitutional amendment was necessary.
Dinh served in the Bush-Ashcroft Justice Department! What about the constitutional opinions that came out of that department in those years? The Washington Post reported on Nov. 20, 2004, page B-1, that the House Committee on Government Reform paid Dinh $25,000 for his opinion. You can look it up on WashingtonPost.com or google or lexis it. Any lawyer out there will defend a bill for that kind of money.
None of them showed up at the Constitution Subcommittee of House Judiciary last year to answer any questions.
Finally, if you want a law to provide a single voting Rep in the House, and no Senators, just put it into a Constitutional Amendment, with a law saying Utah gets its extra Rep and Electoral Vote on the day the Amendment is ratified. If there is bipartisan support, it will sail through.
I do not necessarily favor this, but I absolutely would want it sent to DC voters for a referendum. Proposed Amendment One Representative shall be apportioned to the district constituting the seat of government of the United States, upon approval of this Article by a referendum [convention] of its people.
This solves all the constitutional issues, and the Rep would be permanent, not subject to removal by a future repeal of Davis-Norton.
That is enough for now.