For years, activists had been working hard to admit Washington, D.C., as a state. The federal district, which lacks representation in Congress, contains more people than Wyoming and Vermont, and activists had insisted for years that leaving D.C. in a democratic limbo-land meant that over 700,000 Americans were not appropriately getting their voices heard in Congress.
D.C. statehood is now increasingly a priority for the Democratic Party. Should D.C. be admitted as a state, it would, by a long shot, be the most overwhelmingly Democratic state in the union. Not once since being granted electoral votes in the 1964 election has D.C. ever voted for the Republican Party (in Ronald Reagan’s landslide election victory in 1984, the district voted for Democrat Walter Mondale by a whopping 72 percent margin), and in 2020, only gave Donald Trump about 5 percent of the vote.
This would mean that Democrats are practically guaranteed two Senate seats and one House seat, since, unless there is a major change in political parties, the state is so overwhelmingly blue that there is a zero percent chance of any Republican winning.
Obviously, there are other legitimate reasons besides political gain for the Democrats as to why D.C. should become a state. The U.S. was founded on the principle of “no taxation without representation.” Yet, residents of D.C. not only pay federal taxes at a higher rate than any other state, but they also lack representation in Congress, since the district is not permitted under the Constitution to send any voting delegates to Congress (only states can do so).
In addition, it does not make sense why just because the 700,000 residents of the district live where they are, they are not entitled to any representation in Congress, nor any independence over their city council. (Any laws passed by the Washington, D.C., City Council can be overturned by Congress, as can the city’s budget.)
In fact, just about the only federal representation D.C. residents get desite housing the most important buildings of the federal government is that they can vote for president, which was a right given to these residents with the passage and ratification of the 23rd Amendment in 1961.
And herein lies the issues associated with granting statehood to D.C. Even though Congress had never reached a point in which a D.C. statehood bill was being introduced in the U.S. Senate, making use of a constitutional loophole to achieve this, and momentum for D.C. statehood had never been stronger, making the district a state is still an extremely long shot, and that’s not even counting Republican (and potentially moderate Democrat) opposition.
Article I, Section 8, clause 17 of the Constitution stipulates that Congress has oversight of a district not exceeding ten square miles which is to be the “Seat of the Government of the United States.” This strongly implies that the framers of the Constitution intended for D.C. to be completely under the control of Congress and most explicitly intended it not to be a state.
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;
Article I, Section 8, clause 17 of the United States Constitution
In fact, even during the ratification of the aforementioned 23rd Amendment in 1961, the idea that D.C. could simply be made a state via federal statute seemed unfathomable. To the drafters of the amendment, the Constitution had explicitly stated that there was to be a federal district, and so turning it into a state or giving it votes in the House and Senate required a Constitutional amendment. (The idea of giving D.C. congressional representation was proposed in 1978 but failed when the required number of states didn’t ratify the amendment.)
Then, around 1980, creative activists determined that although the Constitution required a federal district, there was no stipulation of how small it could be (the full text only said the size could not exceed 10 square miles). Thus, they proposed that the federal district could be maintained by simply carving out a small area which included federal buildings like the White House, the Capitol Building, and the Supreme Court, making that the new “federal district,” making the rest of D.C. a state.
Such a constitutional workaround was used in the Washington, D.C. Admission Act that was passed by Democrats in the House in 2020 and 2021. This, proponents of the bill argued, meant that the act was perfectly constitutional, since it retained a “federal district” as the Constitution required.
Unfortunately, this workaround creates its own new Constitutional problems, too, and that goes back to the 23rd Amendment.
The District constituting the seat of government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct: A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a state, but in no event more than the least populous state; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the states, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a state; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.
23rd Amendment to the United States Constitution
Because the 23rd Amendment ensures that the “District constituting the seat of government of the United States” is given electoral votes, it means that the newly-created federal district would also get electoral votes (three, to be exact). This would be in addition to the new state, titled by the Democrats as the state of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, in honor of the famed abolitionist, getting three electoral votes in line with its population count.
The problem is that the only people that live within this new district would be the first family, but that family typically votes in their home state due to tradition. This would mean that there would be three electors representing almost nobody at all — or that the president would simply be able to choose who those electors would vote for, essentially giving the party who has control of the White House three extra electoral votes. (Three more electoral votes would have ensured George W. Bush lost the 2000 election, so it really does matter.)
It also creates a headache for people (which are typically those who support D.C. statehood) who believe that the Electoral College gives too much representation to small states and not enough to big ones since D.C. statehood would create the insanely outrageous situation where two people could decide three electoral votes.
All this could be solved, in theory, if the 23rd Amendment were repealed then and there. However, a repeal would mean a constitutional amendment would need to be passed, and there is no way that three-fourths of state legislatures, the amount necessary to ratify a constitutional amendment, would ratify such an amendment, given that more than half of all legislatures are controlled by Republicans.
This would mean that many Republicans would need to support D.C. statehood, since the repeal of the 23rd Amendment (thereby allowing passage of the D.C. admission act) would essentially be aiding D.C. statehood and removing its most notable constitutional roadblock. In fact, if such a repeal were realistic, one really needs to ask if it’s worth going through all the effort into making D.C. a state via statute and simply pass a constitutional amendment stating otherwise instead.
Regardless of the opposition it may face from moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia or the Republican Party, unless the solutions to these constitutional problems can be eked out, D.C. statehood remains a long shot, no matter how close to reality it has become.