Brian, of Snapped Shot, thinks Rep. Tom Davis is nuts to support a House vote for D.C. residents.
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Open source, procurement, and gov tech.
Brian, of Snapped Shot, thinks Rep. Tom Davis is nuts to support a House vote for D.C. residents.
Comments are closed.
“Should D.C. residents have a House vote?”
Absolutely.
Rep. Davis’s proposal is a pretty modest one–e.g. giving a vote to Utah to balance out the political impact of a D.C. vote.
As far as the constitutional issues are concerned, Brian is right that a constitutional ammendment would likely be necessary to give D.C. full voting rights (two Senators and proportional representation in the House); but I don’t believe the Davis plan of adding one seat would face the same level of legal scrutiny.
http://www.dcfordemocracy.org/issues/dc-voting-rights/
I prefer the idea of adding the DC residents to the Maryland pool, given that the land was originally part of Maryland.
Duane,
I’m all for that idea as well. It’d be a reasonable compromise, and based on Virginia’s re-acquisition of Alexandria and Arlington in 1847 from the District, it’s been proven to work. Well, mostly, anyway. :)
Regards,
Brian
I have no problem with D.C. residents having a congressional vote, so long as it is accomplished constitutionally, and with sensitivity to the very concerns that created it. That requires either: (a) retrocession of non-federal portions of the District to Maryland; or (b) a constitutional amendment. The first option is most easily achievable, though it seems that neither the District nor Maryland want it. That they do not demonstrates a few things: (1) that even Maryland Democrats don’t want responsibility for the mess that is the District and its local government; (2) that, for national Dems, this is more about increased political power than about principle; and (3) that District pols are more interested in advancing narrow partisan interests than “representation” on the same terms and conditions as other Americans. And the third point is precisely why the Framers established the District as a special area, i.e., so that those in proximity to the National Capital would not exercise undue influence over national policies. Davis’ proposal, while well-meaning (Tom is a friend), fails to take account of these concerns, while achieving a short-term good (in the name of “democracy,” which the Framers rightly feared).
James,
Whether Maryland or Virginia is willing to take over non-federal parts of DC is totally irrelevant to DC’s right to a vote. You keep mentioning Maryland and national Democrats as if they matter in the slightest. The right to representation is not a partisan matter. The question of DC’s right to vote cannot be dictated by the willingness of another state or it’s dominant party to get involved. And who cares whether national Democrats see this in altrusitic terms or partisan ones? What does other people’s political approach to something have to do with the basic question of whether this group of people is entitled to participate in American democracy?
You might as well say that conservative arguments against the ethics of abortion are irrelevant because it is used to turn out voters in tight races to increase Republican political power. At the end of the day the politics don’t affect the reality of a fetus whose future existance is in doubt. Non-Republicans might hate the politics surrounding the issue but the moral question remains.
How exactly is it that people in DC have less of a right to advance their narrow partisan interests than everybody else in America? The details of any constituency’s political agenda are irrelevant to the question of their right to representation. It’s like if I said that you should have the right to vote but only if you promise not to vote for a Republican. Who or what you vote for is irrelevant to your right.
In the modern age of instantaneous electronic communication and rapid travel by car, train and plane, proximity to the Capital means very little in terms of a constituency’s political influence. By your logic, we should consider taking away the right to vote from much of Northern Virginia and Southern Maryland since people in those areas can probably take the train/subway to the Capitol building faster than the people could have gotten across DC by horse and buggy in the days of the Founders. Relative proximity to the Captial has obviously expanded enormously through technology.
The only Constitutionally consistent and remotely just means of addressing the DC question without providing them with representation would be to waive all federal taxes on DC residents. Because they are guaranteed “no taxation without representation.” Of course, DC residents would probably be scared sh*tless of this, because most of them are low-income and making DC into a tax haven would attract an huge influx of very wealthy people, gentrifying the city and forcing the natives out. But I don’t know that these economic consequences should be allowed to influence the decision. We mustn’t have the cart pulling the horse.
Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.
Jack, perhaps I missed it, but where in the Constitution does it guarantee “no taxation without representation”? (As an aside, taxation WITH representation sucks, too). As for “DC’s right to vote,” that’s precisely what we’re talking about here, i.e., whether they should have a right to vote. The Constitution denies it to them as to congressional representation. Period.
Your comments reflect a commitment to principles other than the Constitution and its text. Fine principles they may be, some even reflected in the document, but principles which are nevertheless contrary to its plain text. And its plain text is where my commitment must, as a matter of solemn oath, lie.
Buttery breadstuffs aside, Rousseau’s philosophy of social contract applies here.
James, I do not think that the founders, in 1790, anticipated the D.C.’s extent and type of population change. Such voting policy can be applied to a population of 8,000 with minimal deliberate marginalization of their political will. After all, they defined the area, I presume they told the residents “Hear ye! This will become the District of Columbia, a sovereign city within our structure, as of Aug. 12. If you feel impelled to take part in the new federal representation model, please move 5 miles to your West, South or North.” I would also find it logical that the voters who chose to stay within the confines of the new D.C. were white male federal workers who needed to be within easy walking or galloping distance.
However, the same policy certainly should not be applied with equal insouciance to a population ~72 times that size today, filled with voters of all colors and genders, of whom only ~26% work in the government.
Regardless of what the Constitution states, this possible future was likely unanticipated by the framers. Thus, it deserves to be addressed, and, further, redressed, if that is what it takes to maintain the social contract, the spirit of the law (the letters of which you defend so ably).
Rousseau?!?!? That would be a guy who had nothing to do with the framing and passage of the Constitution, right?
Whether the Framers anticipated “the D.C.’s extent and type of population change,” they provided a mechanism for change: the amendment process.
However, TL, I’m delighted that you confess that you feel no commitment to the Constitution and its text. It’s a refreshing honesty. Nevertheles, please don’t confuse these efforts with a constitutional effort. It is distinctly anti-constitutional, so long as a process other than amendment is attempted to resolve this dispute.
And BTW, the “spirit of the law” to which you refer is, in a constitutional republic, reflected in its written and adopted laws, not in references to fashionable theories.
James,
Rousseau was indeed an influence on the Constitution. You can put him in league with Locke and Hobbes as great thinkers who shifted the locus from monarchy to representative government. It may be argued that his seminole work, “The Social Contract”, is represented more in The Declaration of Independence, but to say that he “had nothing to do with the framing and passage of the Constitution” is a bold statement.
The following article in English Historical Review seems to validate my recollections, but by all means please elaborate if I’m mistaken.
Oh, my. Well, thank you for the best laugh I’ve had at work all week, James.
First, Rousseau is the man who said “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” (not Marie Antoinette, who was only 10 at the time he wrote that parable). Smails was quoting him for reason–albeit ironically, as is his wont. So you can blame the Judge, not me, for dragging a dead French philosopher into the debate.
Second, you may not have heard of Jean-Jaques Rousseau, but the framers of the Constitution did. Given the amount of travel between the colonies and France which took place in the 2 decades before the revolution and the decade following, it would have been impossible for them not to have been exposed to Rousseau. He ranks with Hobbes, Montesquieu, and Locke as one of the preminent thinkers/writers during the Enlightenment period.
If you are interested in learning about the philosophical background of the historical documents you defend, you might want to read “The Intellectual Origins of American National Thought” and “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.”
Oops, “preeminent” should be the word there.
The Constitution is a remarkably flexible document, as the current administration has found to its benefit. Certainly nothing within it was chiseled in stone, because we have changed it every time we needed to reinterpret it. How do you think we got the women’s right to vote, the income tax, the abolishment of slavery, and the guarantee of federal citizenship?
In fact, the Cosntitution’s very flexibility has been considered a threat to our freedoms–a megalomaniac in the right political climate could conceivably use the processes in the articles to revoke all the amendments, and then start revamping the articles themselves.
So, I am a huge fan of the Constitution, and a sometime student of it. But I hold absolutely no illusions as to its permanency and unabridgability. I’ve been working in a law office for 10 years. People do hideous things in the name of the law to uphold the letter of the law while wholly revoking and reviling the spirit of the law and the intent of the legislators in framing it.