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Allow D.C. residents to vote for returning part of D.C. to Virginia or Maryland? Shrinking the size of D.C. to the Capital Hill area and the National Monument/White House area?
Allow D.C. residents to vote for returning part of D.C. to Virginia or Maryland? Shrinking the size of D.C. to the Capital Hill area and the National Monument/White House area?
Would you be in favor of this?
What is the point of shrinking part of the national capital? Better yet, why would DC itself want to give up land to Maryland? It does happen but very rarely does a government give up land to another government willingly.
Now if the WHOLE of DC wanted to join Maryland, in other words, become an incorporated city in Maryland, that's a different story.
Climate change is making coasts more hazardous. Some of DC may eventually be under sea level, and the rest will be too dangerous for our national capital. Without the bureaucrats paying inflated rent, it's just swampland becoming saltier.
I don't think DC should become part of a neighboring state...that said, it does seem unfair that the residents of DC don't have any representation in the US House or Senate.
The whole idea of creating a federal district for the seat of government (see Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 17, U. S. Constitution), a measure required by the Constitution, was so that the District would be independent of the state in which it was located, and free from the provincial political vicissitudes of any such host state. The District of Columbia is specifically NOT a state, for that very purpose, and should not be treated as a state in any respect. It is a non-voting political entity precisely for that very reason.
Any proposal to confer upon the District anything other than non-voting representation in the House of Representatives will require a constitutional amendment.
Allow D.C. residents to vote for returning part of D.C. to Virginia or Maryland? Shrinking the size of D.C. to the Capital Hill area and the National Monument/White House area?
Would you be in favor of this?
What you're proposing took place in part way back in 1846 when voters residing in the Virginia portion of the District of Columbia voted in favor of retrocession. Thus Virginia reclaimed approximately one-third of the original 100-square mile capital city and created what is now Arlington County and Alexandria City.
The 61-square-miles of today's District of Columbia is land that was ceded in its entirety by the state of Maryland. The United States Constitution grants Congress ultimate authority over the District of Columbia so any attempt to retrocede the city back to Maryland would probably require a Constitutional amendment. Also, Maryland would have to agree to take back the land it ceded to the U.S. Government to form the capital city.
I lived in the District of Columbia from 1978 t0 2000 and there was much talk then of Statehood for D.C. The U.S. House of Representatives did in fact vote down Statehood for the city back in 1993. I can understand why the Federal Government wants to maintain control of the District for its own maintenance and safety concerns but D.C. citizens do pay Federal income taxes thus IMO should have voting representatives in Congress.
Perhaps the easiest way to achieve that is to allow D.C. citizens the right to vote for the two U.S. Senators from Maryland and give D.C.'s current non-voting delegate in the U.S. House, Eleanor Holms Norton, the right to vote. However, given politics at the Federal, state and local levels (the District being an overwhelmingly Democratic city) none of that is ever likely to happen
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