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| home rule and voting rights of the district of columbia | |
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| history of voting rights in the united states | |
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A separate yet related controversy regards the lack of an intrinsic right for D.C. residents to govern their local affairs. For more on this, see District Of Columbia Home Rule . POLITICAL AND RACIAL COMPLICATIONS African-Americans make up a very high percentage (60%) of the D.C. population, compared to the national average, and critics charge that opposition to D.C. voting rights is largely based on Racism . Whether or not that is true, it is clear that the granting of voting rights would result in a clear benefit to Democrats and a corresponding disadvantage to Republicans ; for example, 89% of D.C. voters supported the Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential Election , a higher percentage than any state mustered for either candidate. Any voting representatives sent to Congress by a future D.C. with voting rights could similarly be expected to be very Liberal . Racist motivations may indeed play a role in this controversy, as indeed may crass self-interest on both sides, but motives are difficult to prove. "TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION" While the District's official motto is ''Justitia omnibus'' ("Justice to All"), the words "Taxation Without Representation", echoing the Revolutionary slogan, "Taxation without Representation is Tyranny!", were added to D.C. license plates in 2000 , and there was briefly a movement to add the words " No Taxation Without Representation " to the D.C. Flag . Advocates who have supported these changes have said that they are intended as a protest and to raise awareness in the rest of the country. These measures in particular were chosen because the D.C. flag is one of the few things under direct local control without requiring approval from Congress. COMPARISONS The political status of Washington, D.C. is comparable to that of U.S. Territories in times past. With the exception of the Eastern Seaboard and Texas, all parts of current U.S. states were at one time or another part of a territory, which had a non-voting delegate to the House and no representation in the Senate. Citizens of U.S. territories were not eligible to vote for President. Several other political entities currently administered by the United States (including Puerto Rico , American Samoa , Guam , and the U.S. Virgin Islands ) are currently identical to D.C. in having only a non-voting delegate to the House. However, the current examples are different from the territories of the past in that they are not being prepared for admission as U.S. State s. The other current examples are also different from D.C. in that Washington has been an integral part of the U.S. for 200 years and still lacks representation in Congress. Citizens of Washington, D.C. are not unique in having diminished representation in their federal legislature, although they are unique in having no voting representation at all. Other nations that have built capital cities from scratch, including Australia and Nigeria , have diminished representation for a Federal District . Canberra formerly had no representation in Australian federal politics, but was granted limited representation in both houses in 1973. On the other hand, Brazil has an expressly-built federal district with full representation in federal government. Mexico and Argentina also have federal districts with full representation, but they are less directly comparable in that Mexico City and Buenos Aires were major cities long before their federal districts were established. HISTORY In 1961 , the Twenty-third Amendment To The United States Constitution was ratified, allowing District residents to vote for president and vice president. This right has been exercised by D.C. citizens since the Election Of 1964 . In 1978 , Congress passed on to the states another constitutional amendment, the District Of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment , which would have given the District its own ''voting'' members of Congress, making it virtually a state. However, a seven-year time limit was placed on the amendment, which was subsequently Ratified by only a handful of states, far short of the three-quarters (currently 38) required for it to be ratified. In anticipation of the amendment's ratification, in 1980 District voters approved the call of a Constitutional Convention to draft a proposed State Constitution , just as U.S. territories in the late 18th , 19th , and early 20th Centuries had done prior to their admission as states. The proposed constitution was ratifed by District voters in 1982 for a new state to be called " New Columbia ". However, the failure of the proposed U.S. Constitutional amendment was deflating to the statehood movement, and the necessary authorization from Congress has never been granted. Pursuant to the proposed state constitution, the District still selects Two "shadow Senators" And A "shadow Representative" to Lobby for statehood in the two houses of Congress. These positions are not officially recognized by Congress. In addition, Congress has passed a law forbidding the spending of any money to lobby for statehood. PROPOSALS FOR CHANGE Advocates have proposed several, competing reforms to increase the District's representation in Congress. These proposals generally either treat D.C. more like a state (see D.C. Statehood ) or involve the state of Maryland taking back the land it ceded to form the District, as Virginia did in 1847 . Statehood Outright Statehood For D.C. was last discussed in the U.S. House of Representatives in November 1993 , and was defeated by the vote of 277 to 153. Proposals to treat the District of Columbia in same way as a state In 1978 , an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have given full congressional voting representation to residents of the District of Columbia passed through both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. However, by 1985 , when the seven year limit on ratification of the amendment set within the Congressional resolution adopting it expired, the amendment had only passed in 16 of 38 states necessary. Senator Joseph Lieberman introduced The "No Taxation Without Representation Act of 2003" (S. 617) on March 13 , 2003 , in the U.S. Senate, and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced the same Act in the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 1285). This legislation would treat D.C. as if it were a state for the purposes of voting representation in Congress. Unlike a constitutional amendment, a bill such as this, even if passed, could theoretically be repealed again by a future Congress. Proposals to retrocede D.C. to Maryland The process of reuniting D.C. with the state of Maryland is sometimes referred to as Retrocession . The original District of Columbia was formed out of parts of both Maryland and Virginia, and from 1790 until 1801 citizens living in D.C. continued to vote for, and even run as, candidates for the U.S. Congress in Maryland or Virginia. In 1846 the land from Virginia was given back to Virginia, such that all the land in present-day D.C. was once part of Maryland. If both the U.S. Congress and the Maryland state legislature agreed, jurisdiction over the District of Columbia could be returned to Maryland. Under a less ambitious proposal, residents of D.C. would be treated as Maryland voters for the purposes of Congressional elections. Congress could give D.C. residents the right to vote for Maryland candidates for the Senate and House , and Maryland's representation in the House could be calculated accordingly. Proposals to grant voting representation only in the House A compromise may even be reached which would allow the District's delegate to Congress to be raised to the status of a full voting member of the U.S. House but still leave the District unrepresented in the Senate. This would reflect the original logic that Senators are supposed to represent states (which the District is not), while members of the House represent the people. Most legal experts believe that even this compromise would require a constitutional amendment. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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