When Washington, D.C., was first established as the center of American government, the founding fathers envisioned it as a city of leadership, devoid of the presence of the masses. Ceded by Maryland and Virginia, it was to be a legislative sanctum in which lawmakers and executives would convene to do the people's business.
Today, far from being a majestic monument vacant of residents, the District of Columbia is home to more than half a million people, none of whom are given representation in Congress.
The issue is deceptively simple: no taxation without representation. It seems strange and unseemly that the city in which the United States government is housed—a government, by the way, that was formed because its citizens rose up against a tyrannical rule that eschewed the active involvement of local inhabitants—would grant its 58,000 residents nothing more than a non-voting delegate in the House of Representatives.
Opponents of D.C. voting rights base their claims mainly on the Constitution: Article 1, Section 2 states that "The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen…by the People of the several States." Strictly speaking, they are correct; nowhere in Section 2 is the non-state District granted voting rights. But this is a facile and shallow answer to a problem that involves real people: how can a nation that decries "separate but equal" allow "separate and unequal" to exist? Indeed, the addition of a non-voting member in the House is little more than an insult. Like a child at a dinner party, D.C. residents are being told that they can listen all they want—but when the grown-ups are making decisions, they'll have to watch from their seat at the kids' table.
In reality, many of the objections to District representation are predictably partisan. Republicans in Congress have refused to allow a vote on D.C. voting rights to come to the floor because the passage of such a bill would create another reliably Democratic House seat (the District has voted heavily Democratic since it was granted the right to vote in presidential elections in 1961; in 2008, Barack Obama won it with 94 percent). While a more recent compromise bill sought to balance the partisan adjustment with a new Republican seat in Utah, members of the GOP have been wary of taking this first step because of a fear that it could lead to a further push for full representation in the Senate.
Their fear is probably justified. With a population greater than Wyoming, D.C. wants and deserves equal representation both in the House and the Senate, and it will not be long before one leads to the other. While some may not like the political implications of such a move, the social ramifications of the current system are worse. "No Taxation Without Representation" is a pithy slogan for a license plate, but a more apt quotation is "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Until Congress restores the rights of half a million tax-paying, law-abiding Americans, it will not have fulfilled the promise of our founding Declaration.
