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LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

MAKING DEMOCRACY WORK IN OUR NATION’S CAPITAL
NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT!

Making Democracy Work in the nation's capital requires action. Last week, the Senate D.C. Subcommittee on Appropriations, which has members from California, North Carolina, and Texas — took up the issue of how the District of Columbia’s government should be structured. Later this year, House Committees with members from Alabama, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin will also address the issue. League members from 16 states, through their participation in House and Senate elections, have the political power to influence the structure of the District's local government. Members of the D.C. League have no such power because the District has no representation in the United States Senate and no voting representation in the House.

The failure of the U.S. Government to provide a way for citizens who live in the District of Columbia to be represented in our national legislature is undemocratic, unjust and contrary to the nearly 75-year-old LWVUS position on Congressional voting representation for the District. We, the delegates from the League of Women Voters of the District of Columbia urge all delegates to join us in recognizing that one of the goals of the 1998-2000 Issue for Emphasis, Making Democracy Work: Seeking Change must be full voting representation for District of Columbia citizens in the United States Congress.

We, who are from D.C., ask you to imagine yourselves having to put up with our limited capacity to participate in the democratic process.

• We can never respond as other Leagues do to action alerts from LWVUS.
• We have no voice in how the federal tax dollars we provide are spent. Residents of the District of Columbia pay over a billion dollars annually in taxes to the federal treasury.
• We have no voice in the Senate's advice and consent on ratification of treaties and key Cabinet and Supreme Court appointments.
• We have no voice in the defense of the United States even though our children’s and neighbors' lives are at stake. District residents have fought and died in every war since the War for Independence; during the Vietnam War, D.C. had more casualties than ten states, and more killed per capita than 47 states.
• For more information, contact: (See the other side)

FACT SHEET
FULL VOTING REPRESENTATION IN CONGRESS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

• The Constitution gives the U.S. Congress the power:

  “To exercise exclusive legislation in all Cases whatsoever over such capital district . . . as may ...become the seat of the Government of the United States.” (Article 1, Section 8)

• Each American citizen residing in the 50 states is represented in Congress by one person in the House of Representatives and two Senators except citizens of the nation's capital. Consider the following:

D.C. was part of the original colonies and its citizens did vote in Congress before the capital was moved to D.C.
According to the Federalist Papers, the lack of attention in the Constitution to D.C.’s situation reflects an oversight.
In the 1990 census, the District’s population (over 600,000) was greater than that of several states (Alaska, Wyoming and Vermont).
Americans living in the nation’s capital — Americans who pay federal taxes and can be called to war — should be treated as other Americans.

• Each chamber in Congress has special responsibilities. Representation is not effective, nor complete if not in both chambers. For example:

  Only the House has the power to initiate money bills.
  Only the Senate votes on treaties and Presidential nominees.
  Conference committees, reflecting differing views of each chamber, are pivotal in legislative action.

• The U.S. Congress has recognized the legitimacy of the District’s having full voting representation as if it were a state. In 1978 it passed legislation for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but the amendment failed to achieve the required approval in the states by the 1985 deadline set in the legislation.
• Among world democracies, notably those where power is divided between the national government and the states, only the U.S. denies to citizens of her national capital, voting representation in the national legislature.

• D.C. citizens are denied representation in Congress which: spends their taxes and runs their lives on a national level, serves as a de facto state legislature, and even has final control over locally raised funds and legislation.

• Non-D.C. residents in effect have more control over the District’s local affairs than D.C. residents themselves.
• The District is a unique jurisdiction, but it should not be uniquely disenfranchised.

LWV-District of Columbia E-mail: voters1@capAccess.org Telephone: (202) 331-4122

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