alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

February 13, 2007

DC Vote Responds to Report

by AltHippo @ 5:53 pm. Filed under Life in D.C.

If you don’t live around here, you may not know that residents of the District can’t vote in Congressional elections. It’s annoying, quite frankly, not to mention contrary to the notion of a representational style of government.

So, there’s a bill that may well get passed to give DC a Represenative, but no Senators. Like many things in this life, it’s a compromise. For all I know the next life will be filled with compromise, too.

Anyway, great legal scholars like Instanpundit have weighed in, saying it’s obvious to them that it’s unconstitutional. DC Vote has lined up some experts on the other side:

The American Bar Association has said the bill is constitutional. Former Judges such as Kenneth Starr and Patricia Wald have also concluded that Congress has the power to use the District Clause of the Constitution to provide voting representation in Congress for DC residents.

These, and other scholars including Viet Dinh, have found that Congress has repeatedly treated DC as if it were a state for purposes of the Commerce Clause and Diversity Jurisdiction section of the Constitution. Therefore, if Congress can use the District Clause for purposes of those provisions of the Constitution, in our view Congress can use that power to provide representation.

I appreciate arguments like the use of the Commerce Clause, etc., but in plain language there’s just no fucking way the founding fathers would have excluded a half-million people from voting rights just because they lived in the capitol city. Moreover, there’s no fucking way that anyone would have signed the Constitution if they foresaw that as a possible outcome. People I’ve tried to explain this to the world over think the current situation is just too weird for words. It’s about time it got changed. Can you imagine would happen if people in Paris, London, Rome, or Vienna couldn’t vote?

That said, I’m always uncomfortable when I’m on the same side with Kenneth Starr and Viet Dinh.

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One Response to “DC Vote Responds to Report”

  1. Lynda Says:
    February 14th, 2007 at 10:30 am

    DC Vote, and various other groups/DC residents, will be lobbying on Capital Hill on Thursday,
    Feb. 15th. More info at http://www.dcvote.org/

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