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Comment by briandear | Hacker News Reader

DC is not a sovereign state, thus isn’t entitled to a senator. DC doesn’t have a state government that needs representation, which is the purpose of a senator. This isn’t some Republican conspiracy that just happened.

The Senate wasn’t designed to represent “the people” anyway, it was designed to represent the interests of the sovereign states — of which DC is not. The House of Representatives is what represents “the people.”

There is a persistent and fundamental lack of understanding of the US government by many people, case in point is the complete ignorance about the purpose of both the Senate and the electoral college. The US is a federal republic, not a democracy.

This has nothing to do with Republicans and Democrats, but with the Constitution.

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Thank you for the background. I guess I should have written DC has no representation in the House then. Regardless of how it was originally setup, I don't see any reason why people paying federal taxes shouldn't have voting rights, at least in the House. Here's a good legal argument for it too:

https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/poladv/...

> The Senate wasn’t designed to represent “the people” anyway, it was designed to represent the interests of the sovereign states — of which DC is not. The House of Representatives is what represents “the people.”

This was how it was designed, and if state congresses still elected federal senators, this argument against DC having senate representation would hold water. Once the 17th Amendment changed it to direct election of senators, the chamber no longer represented the interests of the state, it now just gives the people in less populous states a lot more influence over the law.

> The US is a federal republic, not a democracy.

The USA clearly is a democracy, since it has democratic elections. Specifically, it is a representative democracy. I have no idea why anyone thinks being a federation and/or being a republic are somehow in opposition to this. The three concepts are completely orthogonal.

Maybe it comes from the idea that many of the founding fathers didn't seem to care for the concept of democracy? At the time it was considered by many as essentially mob rule.

I can see that the context doesn't fit with today's ideas and definitions of how our country's government works, but that is exactly how the country was set up in the beginning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_U...

> The Senate wasn’t designed to represent “the people” anyway, it was designed to represent the interests of the sovereign states

And over time it has evolved to directly represent the people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_U...

We have 27 reasons to think the constitution as designed was imperfect, and at least one reason to think the representation of DC was flawed. I'm sure we can add more.

You are just reiterating the complaint.

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