Photo Credits: Creative Commons

Madison Kwiecinski 

News Editor 

mvk5945@psu.edu 

On February 22nd, Robert Speel, Associate Professor of Political Science at Penn State Behrend presented a series of points on why the District of Columbia should be able to qualify for statehood in the U.S. Professor Speel was joined by several colleagues, alumni, friends, and current students. 

Washington D.C. is the capital of the U.S. and, according to the 2010 census, has 602,000 citizens living within it. The 2020 census projects D.C. to have grown by approximately 100,000 citizens. With these estimates, the district would have more total citizens than the entire state of Wyoming, as well as Vermont. D.C. also has a very close population to the entire state of Alaska. 

Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress exclusive legislative authority over D.C. The district is the only place in the U.S. that has taxation without representation, the entire concept the original colonists fought against in the Revolutionary War. 

In 1961, the Voting Rights Amendment was passed, which essentially granted D.C. residents the right to vote for President, which they previously could not do. D.C many now vote on electors to send to the electoral college, but under no circumstances can D.C. have more electors than the least populous state, regardless of the district’s population. 

Presidential elections are not the only way in which citizens of D.C. have restricted representation. The District of Columbia is allowed to elect “shadow congressmen” who are able to sit on committees, but have no voting rights on the Congress floor. 

Over the last several decades, D.C. has almost achieved statehood several times, but has consistently fell short of attaining these rights.

D.C. demographics show the district to be consistently overwhelmingly democratic, with a high African American and minority population. Whenever the Voting Rights Amendment was passed, 10 out of the 11 states who refused to approve had previously succeeded from the union in order to maintain slavery in their states. As it was likely D.C. would outlaw slavery within the district if it did become a state, this may have been a large motivating reason to prevent stateship. 

D.C. has consistently pushed for an amendment to provide full voting membership without statehood, but have been denied. In 1982, voters approved of a referendum to seek statehood from congress, but it has never been passed. In 2016, 85 percent of the district’s residents again voted on a referendum to become the 51st state named New Columbia, but have not made any progress towards this yet. 

The U.S. is the only democratic country to not give full voting rights to its citizens within a district. The US has been cited by the UN Committee and the Organization of American States, OAS, Commission for violating the political rights of the citizens of D.C. 

During the presentational Q and A, when asked about whether or not D.C. statehood is a realistic possibility in the future, Professor Speel stated, “I think the house is going to vote for it again, the problem is the senate they will filibuster unless you can get 10 republicans to do it…..My guess is it will happen in my lifetime, but I do not think it is going to be this year.” 

D.C. statehood has become a bipartisan political issue, with Republicans reluctant to allow another democratic state into the union. However, there is still more to be done about the situation. Individual states that are partisan to one side already exist, with both California and Texas as prominent examples.

Whenever professor Speel was asked about what can be done to help further the cause for D.C. statehood he said, “[They] are just going to have to try to work with republicans, they can make the moral case that they have taxation not representation” He continued, “They need to mobilize people and turn it into a cause. If they would get people from other states to care about it it would become a cause.”

D.C. statehood is not only important to the citizens who live there, but also is a way of paving the path for future territories that may desire to take the same path in the future.