JPL
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join:2007-04-04
West Chester, PA
 ·Verizon FIOS
1 edit | reply to whfsdude
Re: Done?
said by whfsdude  :Which is why the residents of DC need some form of voting rights. We are a district, why no house rep? I know this is WAY OT, but what the heck. Constitutionally they're not allowed to have one. The US capital is not allowed to be a state, and as such has no such provisions at the federal level. They have a delegate in Congress, and she can engage in floor debate, but she can't vote for anything. Even for presidential elections it took a Constitutional ammendment to allow residents to cast a ballot on election day. Electoral votes are allocated by congressional representations - every state gets at least 3 EVs, because every state has 2 senators and at least one member of the house. As a result, DC initially has no EVs, which means that you couldn't really vote for president if you lived in the city. An ammendment changed that, allocating 3 EVs automatically to the city.
There have been pushes for statehood, and allowing for representation in Congress, but doing that would require either:
a) a constitutional ammendment or
b) a reallocation of the city
On that second one, what they would do is make the area covered by Capitol Hill, the White House, and the rest of the mall the new US Capital (there's nothing in the Constitution that says that the whole city has to be the capital). The surrounding area would either become its own state, or reabsorbed back into VA and MD. |
