With a Bit of Horse-Trading, D.C. Can Finally Win Democracy

The citizens of our nation’s capital pay federal taxes at the country’s second-highest rate per capita; they fight and die in the nation’s wars in numbers that are proportionately much higher than that of several states; and they are required to obey all the laws passed by Congress. But unlike people in the rest of the country, they have no voting representation in the Congress that makes those laws, declares those wars and imposes those taxes.

It would surely sadden the founders of our country to learn that our government spends billions of dollars and thousands of lives to take democracy to other countries and yet has not taken the simple step of bringing democracy to our own capital.

This failure of democracy at home is an accident of history. When the U.S. Constitution was written in 1789, there was no national capital. The capital wasn’t established until 1801, when it was carved out of parts of Maryland and Virginia. (The Constitution requires that the capital be separate from any state.) As a result, the citizens living there lost the right to vote on the day the capital was established.

But now, at last, Congress has before it a proposal that could begin righting this wrong. A bill introduced by Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) would give a House seat to the District of Columbia and also give a seat to Utah, which barely missed getting an additional seat at the time of the 2000 census. The beauty of this proposal is that it gives a seat to a Democratic district (Washington, D.C.) and a seat to a Republican one (Utah).

This is much the same approach Congress used when Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union. Both parties supported that joint admission because one state was expected to vote Democratic and the other Republican. Here, too, both parties can support democracy for the nation’s capital because there will be no change in the overall balance of political power.

Of course, things are never that easy. Even though the two Republican House members from Utah have endorsed Davis’ bill, Republicans are not yet fully supportive because some of them figure that they’ll pick up the Utah seat after the 2010 census, so why let D.C. get the vote in exchange for something the Republicans will have anyway by the time of the 2012 elections?

And the Democrats are not fully behind the bill because some of them fear that once Utah is given an additional seat, Republicans will redistrict the state in a way that will take away the sole Democratic seat in Utah. Thus, the net result of the Davis bill might be one new seat for the Democrats but a two-seat gain for the Republicans.

Both sides should put such partisanship aside. As Davis has said, justice for the people of Washington, D.C., “should not have to wait, especially for politics.” The Republicans should support the certain additional seat for Utah and guarantee that they will not redistrict that state to pick up two seats. One easy way to provide that guarantee is to agree through the Davis bill that Utah’s new seat would be elected at large (rather than from a specific district) until the next census, obviating any need to redistrict the state. And the Democrats, once given such a guarantee, should certainly support a seat for D.C.

The people of Washington, D.C., have waited more than 200 years to begin participating in our nation’s democracy. There is no principled basis for making them wait any longer. Congress should pass the Davis bill now.