Authors: Elliot Mamet (Princeton University)
Title: Democratic Equality for Washington, D.C.!
Journal: Perspectives on Politics

The political status of Washington, D.C., is a longstanding issue in American politics. Contributing to the debate, Elliot Mamet, a postdoctoral research associate, argues that the District deserves democratic equality through statehood.

Drawing on original archival research, Mamet provides a historical overview of D.C.’s democratic disenfranchisement, outlines three forms of democratic inequality faced by D.C. residents, and imagines what democratic equality for D.C. might look like.

“The paper shows how D.C. is disenfranchised in multiple ways: voteless in the House, voiceless in the Senate, and without full local self-government,” Mamet said, making a point that, at a minimum, its residents should have the power to vote for representatives in national and local legislatures, that their vote have equal weight to others, and that D.C.’s elected representatives have the power to vote on legislation.

“The 700,00 residents of Washington, D.C. deserve democratic equality with those living in the several states,” he said.

Mamet’s article gestures toward broader implications beyond just D.C.

“I conclude by sketching a broader research agenda about the democratic injustices accorded to those Americans living outside the several states,” Mamet said. “The endurance of disenfranchised, sub-state anomalous zones like Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, places overwhelmingly home to racial and ethnic minorities who are bound by coercive, federal law on which their elected representatives may not vote, strains notions of political equality central to the American democratic ideal.”

“Today, D.C.'s autonomy and self-governance are precarious and under attack from Congress and the President,” Mamet said.

Mamet notes that on March 11, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives, which includes no voting members from D.C., passed an appropriations bill that cut over $1 billion dollars of locally raised funds from the District's budget. That measure passed the Senate on March 14 and was signed into law on March 15.

“Numerous anti-D.C. bills have been introduced so far in the 119th Congress,” Mamet said. “President Trump has said the federal government should takeover D.C. Amid this sustained challenge to D.C.'s limited home rule, this article argues for an alternative, democratic vision for the District of Columbia: full democratic equality, achieved through statehood.”