Florence Kane `20
News Editor
After last month’s historic midterm elections gave rise to an unprecedented number of women, people of color, and members of LGBTQ+ community in Congress, a less well-known political movement to make the District of Columbia an official state has gained steam. Statehood would grant the District full voting representation in Congress and rights to self-government.
Amendment XXIII of the United States Constitution allows D.C. residents to vote for president and a single member Congress in the House of Representatives, but the member is non-voting and only holds power to debate on the floor and serve on committees and caucuses.
On its website, the D.C. Statehood Coalition writes that residents of the District “bear all the same responsibilities of citizenship, including paying federal taxes, serving on federal juries, [and] serving in the military [but] have no protection from key Constitutional rights.”
In fact, the license plates in D.C. bear the words “taxation without representation,” an allusion to the same slogan used over two centuries ago by American colonists stating their grievances against British rule, contributing to the start of the Revolutionary War.
Under the name New Columbia, the 51st state would need approval from at least two-thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives. Three-quarters of the current states would have to acknowledge the change as well.
Technicalities of achieving statehood remain difficult to overcome, however. The District would be overwhelmingly Democratic if admitted as a state in Congress. In fact, D.C. has voted blue in every single Presidential election since 1964, meaning many left-leaning Congressmembers support D.C.’s statehood, whereas right-swinging Congressmembers tend to oppose it.
D.C. resident Tatsie Masters `20 supports D.C. statehood: “If we are truly a country of equal opportunity, then citizens’ rights should be prioritized over party pow
er … D.C. deserves to be a state,” said Masters.
In terms of partitioning, the new state would have its own boundaries, while the District of Columbia would remain the nation’s capital and under the control of the federal government. Since opponents of D.C. statehood argue that the federal government should have ultimate control of the place where it exists, the District would remain the nation’s capital but shrink in size, giving most of its land to New Columbia.
The White House, Capitol, Supreme Court, and most national monuments would remain in D.C.
Nationwide, only fifty percent of Americans support the movement. Of the residents in D.C., however, around 75 percent support statehood, according to a 2015 Washington Post poll.
Daniel Petri, AP American Government and AP Comparative Politics teacher, is one of them. “D.C. has a larger population than Vermont and Wyoming but lacks the ability to control her own laws … I am a firm believer that D.C. deserves the right to govern herself,” said Petri.
The Wicket 