It is particularly cruel that we pass another celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and there are still 570,000 U.S. citizens right around the corner who cannot vote for a congressional representative. It’s almost mockery.
A few weeks before the Supreme Court ruled in favor of then-Governor George W. Bush in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, it let stand a lower-court decision that upheld a two-century-old practice of disenfranchisement. Two out of three judges in the U.S. District Court said that District residents have no constitutional right to elect representatives and senators.
In effect, the District Court threw its hands up: “The remedies [that] plaintiffs request are beyond this court’s authority to grant.” The District Court couldn’t act because every right District residents said they possessed?equal protection under the law and to elect senators and representatives?was explicitly granted to citizens of states. Consider the 17th Amendment: “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State.”
Now, it is not wholly radical to claim that the District ought to be treated as a state. In fact, the Supreme Court interpreted the Eighth Amendment?a right to a trial by “an impartial jury of the State”?to apply to D.C. residents. Furthermore, federal responsibilities apply to District residents: They pay federal income taxes, for instance.
At the same time, the Court has ruled at other times that the District was not a state. So, it was up to the District Court to discern the intent of the Constitution’s framers. The District Court majority argued that a strict interpretation of “states” was required.
The Constitution is explicit about who runs the District: Congress. This matters because it obviates any substantial role for a state legislature, whose presence is actually very important. The Consitution explicitly grants the right to vote for House representatives to citizens who are qualified to serve in state legislatures. In the matter of the vote, then, a qualified voter is that citizen who lives somewhere with a state legislature. A city council subject to Congressional oversight doesn’t cut it.
So what will change require? We could try again to go through the courts, although that approach will be slow and probably unsuccessful. We could try for statehood, but that is actually unnecessary. Let us make the issue straightforward for the American public: Amend the Constitution to guarantee all citizens, regardless of where they live, a right to vote for the House and Senate. State or no state, a citizen’s-right-to-vote amendment would garner support.
Some activists have taken up civil disobedience. D.C. RABBLE advocates that residents refuse federal jury duty, although they have temporarily suspended this campaign as terrorist-related cases require residents for grand juries. But civil disobedience RABBLE-style will not win us allies among other Americans who don’t want to serve on juries either.
While you should dial up these advocacy groups and have your say, let me offer an education-and publicity-based approach ? la the great civil rights march on the Lincoln memorial almost 40 years ago. This parallel is not to be taken lightly. This will become a definitive civil rights issue, if not now, then in the not-too-distant future. If a voice is raised, no such law that so contradicts American political values could survive.
