It was hardly surprising to see the Senate acquit former President Donald Trump despite the overwhelming evidence presented against him at his brief impeachment trial. But our senators Susan Collins and Angus King deserve credit for listening to the strong accounts presented and voting to convict on the charge of inciting the January 6 assault on the capitol.
But those who were most affected by the riots didn’t have a seat at the table when an article of impeachment came before the House or the Senate.
Washington, D.C.—the site of five deaths in the insurrection and two more deaths by suicide of police officers who defended the Capitol in the days following—has no voting representation in the U.S. House or Senate. One hundred and forty Capitol Police and D.C. Police Officers were injured in the attack. Many of them live in D.C., so they have no one speaking for them in the Congress that they risked their lives to protect.
D.C.’s disenfranchisement arose by historical accident when the U.S. capital moved to D.C. at the end of the 18th century and few people lived there. As the population grew, some members of Congress considered ending this taxation without representation in the late 1800s. But opponents, led by former Confederate general and slaveholder John Tyler Morgan, scuttled these efforts. Morgan explained his horrific rationale was that once “the negroes came into this district,” it became necessary to “deny the right of suffrage entirely to every human being.”
D.C. statehood isn’t just about the people who live there. Remember last June when so many leaders and elected officials declared themselves champions of racial equity? Statehood is their chance to end a longstanding racial injustice and achieve the only state where Black residents would be the largest racial group.
Leaving D.C.’s voice out of legislative debates also hurts Maine. Forty six percent of students in Maine public schools have family incomes low enough to qualify for free or reduced lunch. The figure is even higher in D.C., so it’s a good bet that D.C.’s senators would join ours as advocates against cuts to the School Breakfast and School Lunch programs. Sen. King has championed veterans issues, but those debates miss the perspective of the 32,000 D.C. residents who are veterans, and a large active-duty military population in D.C. stationed at Marine barracks, an Air Force base, and serving the nearby Pentagon. King and Collins have also promoted clean energy in the U.S. Senate, but D.C., which has among the strongest clean energy standards in the U.S., is left out of those debates.
D.C. has more residents than Vermont or Wyoming, and is poised to pass Alaska in population too, but some arguments get leveled against D.C. statehood. The first is that D.C. should be absorbed by Maryland, but this seems like telling Maine to rejoin Massachusetts because we were part of Massachusetts (1820) more recently than D.C. was part of Maryland (1790). The second is that there are constitutional issues, but the proposed bill to make D.C. a state addresses them by preserving a federal district around the Capitol, Supreme Court, White House, and other federal grounds, consistent with the Constitution. The third is that D.C. families — whose professions range from teachers and essential workers to firefighters and small business owners — should be disenfranchised because they are not “working-class,” “well-rounded,” or “real people,” and we cannot “trust” the leaders who D.C. residents elect. But frankly, these arguments have so little substance that they seem like the 21st century versions of John Tyler Morgan’s arguments against letting D.C. residents vote.
The final argument, which Trump made vocally, is that D.C. residents should not have equal voting rights because they have often elected Democrats. At a superficial level, this view ignores the fact that D.C. has tended to elect moderates, like our own senators, rather than firebrands. But viscerally, this argument, like the January 6 insurrection, is a betrayal of our Constitution and the rationale for our nation. Americans’ voting rights simply should not be based on how they exercise them. King and Collins must know this to be true. It’s time for them to finally join their colleagues in supporting The Washington, D.C. Admission Act.
Photo: Activists take part in a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington, D.C.. | Drew Angerer, Getty Images
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