A Rundown of Everything You Need to Know About the DC Statehood Movement

What is the District of Columbia (DC) statehood movement?

The DC statehood movement is a grassroots, organizational and political campaign to change DC from a federal district with limited political power into a state with full voting, representation and local governance rights for its citizens.

Who supports DC statehood?

According to a 2005 poll conducted by KRC research, 78 percent of Americans wrongly believed that District residents already had full equal voting rights and representation enjoyed by their nearby state resident counterparts. When told that they were incorrect, 82 percent of those surveyed supported District residents gaining full equal voting rights and representation.

However, findings vary on how pollers ask the DC statehood question and context of the present. Right before the government shutdown, Rasmussen Reports published a poll of 1,000 voters that found only 25 percent of Americans wanted DC statehood. Critics and supporters of DC statehood felt this poll was misleading, and encouraged the myths and false facts surrounding the DC Statehood argument.

When the facts are set straight, support for DC voting rights and representation generally increases.

How will statehood impact the lives of District residents politically?

Right now, District residents can vote for President and elect a non-voting Delegate to Congress. Residents also vote for Mayor as well both the at-large members of the Council of the District of Columbia and their respective neighborhood Ward member of the Council.

However, it wasn’t until 1961 that the 23rd Constitutional Amendment was ratified, which granted District residents the right to vote in Presidential elections, and not until 1973 when Congress passed the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which granted District residents limited power to govern their own city government with a Mayor and City Council.

If DC becomes a state, District constituents would be entitled to full voting rights and congressional representation, meaning they will be able to elect at least one representative to the House of Representatives and two senators to the Senate.

The House of Representatives initiates all legislative matters related to the country’s budget, funding and spending, while the Senate has the power to impact international diplomatic treaties between countries and confirm presidential appointments, such as Supreme Court nominations. Right now, DC citizens have no say on these matters because their non-voting delegate is not allowed to vote on any pieces of legislation.

What political power do local elected officials in DC have right now?

Home rule, which refers to the ability and opportunity for DC residents to have full say and control over their local affairs, is limited. Congress has the power to overturn any local District law and compared to the rest of the country, exercises an unprecedented right to oversee and control the District.

Even now, the Mayor’s Office and City Council can be dissolved at the leisure of Congress, and DC’s budget (mandated to always have to balance) is subject to Congressional approval.

Traditionally, and even today, the committees of Congress assigned to oversee the District are viewed as lacking both prestige and importance by Congressional members.

Currently the District is overseen by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform plus its Subcommittee on Health Care, District of Columbia, Census and National Archives. DC deserves to have elected officials with legislative authority who are fully invested in its residents, rather than out-of-touch members of Congress more concerned with the happiness of their own respective states and districts.

Isn’t it constitutionally illegal for DC to become a state?

No, actually it’s not. The only real limit set forward by the Constitution is that DC cannot exceed a 100 square miles area, but there’s no instructions regarding how small D.C. can be. The District could be theoretically downsized into a non-residential area that includes federal and military office buildings, with the rest of the residential parts of the District being incorporated into a state with full voting rights.

Wouldn’t the process to make DC a state be tedious and difficult?

States have actually been created 85 percent as many times as we have elected a president. Since the original 13 states joined the Union by their ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the U.S. has added approximately one new state every 6 years.

There isn’t enough people for the District to be a state.

The 2012 Census estimated that the District had 632,323 residents, placing it ahead of Vermont’s 626,011 and Wyoming’s 576,412. In addition, there are more district residents that are military personnel than in 31 of the other states in the country. These men and women in military service, although able to vote for their military commander-in-chief, are unable to have a say in electing the members of the body of that actually determines whether or not to declare war.

What’s the political hold-up?

Politically, some opponents of District statehood inevitably worry how full representation would change the numbers make-up of Congress in an era of gridlock and hyper-partisanship. DC is overwhelmingly Democratic in composition, with 90.9 percent of DC voters in 2012 choosing to re-elect Barack Obama, according to the DC Board of Elections. From this statistic and a historic trend of the District voting Democratic, it’s a safe bet that DC would send two more Democratic senators and one Democratic representative to Congress.

However, the lion’s share of concern lies in practical implementation of statehood. People who don’t want to see the District become a part of Maryland cite the burden on security expenses, but if DC was its own state, concerns about potential burdens on existing states would be unfounded. Additionally, if the downsizing of the capital city district was accepted, the federal government would pay for security, negating financial burden concerns on new and existing states entirely.

President Barack Obama recently came out in favor of DC statehood. President Obama also made the choice to put “Taxation Without Representation” DC license plates on the vehicles in the presidential motorcade, following in President Bill Clinton’s footsteps.

But if DC becomes a state, won’t District residents have to pay federal taxes in addition to local taxes?

District residents actually pay federal taxes already. If D.C. residents didn’t pay federal taxes, the District would be overpopulated with tax evaders, which is simply not the case. There is a proposal to exempt DC from federal income taxes, but as of now it hasn’t been adopted. In reality, DC residents pay more than double the national average in income taxes. DC’s state and local income tax collections per person were $2142 in 2011.

Why not just let D.C. join Maryland like the section of the District that was given back to Virginia across the Potomac River in 1846?

There is a good chance Maryland won’t want the land it originally donated to the District back. The addition of over 600,000 residents would push Maryland’s population to over 6 million, possibly qualifying the state for more representatives in the House and more electoral votes in the Electoral College in addition to its existing 10. Currently, Maryland sends 7 Democrats of its 8 members in the House.

Also, this idea is unpopular with District residents. In an interview with The Washington Post cited by the Montgomery County Daily, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) feels that DC and Maryland residents are proud of their separate, distinctive identities.

“I think the residents of the District of Columbia have no desire to be subsumed into the state of Maryland. They are very proud of the fact they are District of Columbia citizens,” Hoyer said.

What are some recent happenings in the DC Statehood movement?

Legislatively, a lot of the strides made most recently to achieve DC Statehood have been largely symbolic and geared towards mobilizing support.

Council Member Yvette Alexander recently introduced a bill at the DC City Council level, which will rename the two blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue that pass by the White House “D.C. Statehood Now Way.” Alexander hopes the proposed renaming would be a wake-up call to passerby tourists. The new White House address would be “1600 D.C. Statehood Now Way” rather than “1600 Pennsylvania Ave”.

How do I get involved in the DC statehood movement?

Check out Neighbors United for DC Statehood , DC Vote and Stand Up For Democracy in DC ,three wonderful resources for both more information and ways to get involved. You can also register with the DC Statehood Green Party.