There was one itty bitty spot in the entire middle band of this continent that people could move to and wouldn't be able to vote. So hundreds of thousands of people did. Still confuses me.
The apathy about this issue is what confuses me - what harm would it do to allow DC residents to vote? What reason could you have to oppose DC citizens gaining the right to vote? The argument that federal government workers should be forbidden from voting is incredibly hollow - the vast majority of them reside outside the city. Also, this is tantamount to saying "Park Rangers in Idaho shouldn't be allowed to vote," a position I have never heard put forward.
I'm not against letting DC vote to fix the problem at this point. But this situation is ridiculous. There was no reason to start a major city in the no-voting zone.
Personally, I have no problem with adding DC as another state.
Politically, it'll never happen (imho). why would any senator give up 2% of their power to add 2 more senators? There are probably many issues blocking, but on that one at least is a monster to overcome.
No new senators would be created, so no yielding 2% power, and Maryland and Virginia might get 1-2 more electoral votes and/or congressional representatives.
I would imagine that the main issue that would need to be resolved is jurisdictional...would laws passed in Maryland and Virginia apply to residents of DC? If so, it's conceivable that those states could influence Federal policy. What would happen if one of those states made it illegal to order a drone strike without the approval from one of their courts...could the President be arrested and charged in that state for violating that law?
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_retrocessi...
Probably not, because Supremacy Clause. Federal officers operate in the states fairly regularly, and this general issue (not the specific issue involving the President and drone strikes in particular) has been litigated extensively.
See Coleman v. Maryland, holding that since the medical leave act provisions under the Family and Medical Leave Act were passed under the commerce clause, not the EPC, then state governments were not bound to it.
Presumably for reasons similar to ones that lead previous Congresses to add the previous 37 states to the Union, despite even higher dilution of power.
That sounds like a decent reason. Not compelling, but decent. It only needs to be enough to counter the anti-dilution argument, after all.
Puerto Rico's statehood is more likely though. In the 2012 election both Obama and Romney indicated support for statehood should that be what the people of PR decide. That's complicated because apparently the Republican Party of PR is the statehood party, even though PR is likely to vote for the Democratic Party. (See http://www.caribbeanbusinesspr.com/news/dc-lobbyist-warning-... )
So, D's control the House and Senate, DC and PR become states, and the D's pick up about 10 seats and hold power even longer. That's more compelling than DC alone.
I think the issue is more why would any republican senator vote for it, since DC is extremely liberal and would be confirmed Democratic bastions
Aren't rising house prices also a problem?
By contrast, people who don't live in DC didn't have their pay cut 10% by mandatory furloughs demanded by a governing body they have no vote in. People who don't live in DC get to pass laws determining how they want to live, without those laws being vetoed by representatives from Oklahoma who find them politically inconvenient in their home state.
I haven't even touched on the fact that DC's population is over 50% black, and has been for decades. It may not be the case now, but in the past the arguments for refusing DC residents the right to vote were very explicitly racial.
(Please tell me it wasn't because someone thought I was including dangerlibrary in those hundreds of thousands. That's a distinction that really doesn't matter, and I didn't want to double the size of the post with a disclaimer.)