Unlike those who live in the 50 US states, residents of Washington, D.C are not represented by a Senator, and are only able to send a non-voting delegate to Congress. That same Congress can also nullify D.C.’s local laws. Elliot Mamet argues that D.C. residents should be afforded the democratic rights enjoyed by most other Americans, and that the most effective way to achieve this is to grant the nation’s capital full statehood.

Washington, D.C. is an anomaly. In no other democracy worldwide are the residents of the capital city disenfranchised, but in D.C., residents pay federal taxes and are bound by federal law on which their elected representative in the US Congress has no vote. D.C. residents deserve democratic equality—which can only be fully achieved through statehood.

Washingtonians suffer three primary forms of democratic inequality. First, Washington D.C. has limited local self-government. Congress granted Washington D.C. Home Rule in 1973, but under the provisions of the Home Rule Act, Congress can vote to nullify any local D.C. law. As recently as 2023, President Biden signed into law H.J.Res. 26, which quashed a law passed by the D.C. city council to revise and modernize its criminal code. The revised criminal code had been passed by D.C.’s local government, but Congress—in which D.C. has no voting representation—voted to nullify the laws.

Second, in the House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. residents elect a delegate to Congress. The delegate may sponsor and cosponsor legislation, hire staff, vote in standing committees, and vote in Committee of the Whole, but they may not vote on the final passage of legislation. They may also not vote for Speaker of the House, vote on impeachment, or sign a discharge petition. They are procedurally inferior to their 435 voting peers.

“Statehood for the People of DC sign in” (CC BY 2.0) by Lorie Shaull

Third, in the Senate chamber, D.C. is completely unrepresented. While D.C. residents elect ‘Shadow Senators,’ these officials are not seated as members of the Senate. Their absence means that D.C. residents have no vote on the ratification of treaties, the outcome of impeachment trials, and on the confirmation of judges and other officials—including local D.C. judges and the US attorney for the District of Columbia. D.C.’s absence from the Senate exemplifies its formally inferior role in the American constitutional schema.

Real democracy for D.C.

What, then, should the political status of D.C. look like? Democratic theory tells us that D.C. residents should, at least, retain formal political equality to the residents of several states. This means that they should be granted a vote for representatives in national and sub-national lawmaking bodies. It means that their vote should have equal weight to the vote of others. And it means that their elected representatives should be empowered to vote on what the law is.

This three-pronged vision of formal political equality is only possible via D.C. statehood. Statehood would give D.C. residents a vote for members of the House and Senate. Statehood would make the vote of D.C. residents equal to the vote of residents of several states. And statehood would empower D.C. elected officials—especially the D.C. Council and the Mayor—to determine local law without that law being nullified by an unelected, unaccountable body. Statehood would finally bring democracy to D.C., long after opponents have claimed that D.C. is “too liberal, too urban, too Black or too Democratic.”

Some have objected to statehood by claiming that the federal government has a unique federal interest in exerting absolute authority over its capital city. But this federal interest need not disenfranchise 700,000 D.C. residents. Some have also objected to statehood by suggesting that D.C. should return to Maryland. But residents of both D.C. and Maryland, as well as nearly all D.C. and Maryland elected officials, oppose this. A referendum calling for statehood passed in D.C. in 2016 with 86 percent of the vote.

Short of statehood, there are smaller changes that would reduce the democratic inequality afforded to D.C. Some only require narrow changes. For example, the D.C. Home Rule Act could be amended to give D.C. full local-self-government and remove Congress’s ability to nullify local D.C. laws, among other changes. In the House, rules amendments could enhance the standing of the delegate – such as granting the delegate the right to sign discharge petitions, vote on impeachment and on simple resolutions. In the Senate, D.C. could be awarded a delegate, which is an old proposal that nearly became law in the 1970s. But none of these proposals would fully realize D.C.’s democratic status.

D.C.’s second-class democratic status is part of the broader injustice accorded to the more than four million Americans, who are overwhelmingly racial and ethnic minorities, who live in the US but outside of the fifty states. Residents of D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the US Virgin Islands are all governed by a Congress in which their elected representative has no vote. The second-class status of D.C. and the territories stands in stark contrast with ideals of democracy engrained in American political life.

• This article is based on the paper “Democratic Equality for Washington, D.C.!,” in Perspectives on Politics.
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