« Short cuts | Main | A mockery of democracy »
September 15, 2006
America's undemocratic centre
From The Economist:
RECENT polls suggest that almost two-thirds of Americans are dissatisfied with their representatives in Congress. Residents of the District of Columbia are unhappy for a different reason: they have no representative. No senators, either. Currently, the District's congressional presence consists of one non-voting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton. A United Nations human-rights committee recently said it was “concerned” about the situation. But it is enshrined in the constitution: Congress has legislative authority over the seat of the federal government, and only states have senators and representatives.
For many residents of the District, the lack of congressional representation is just another quirk of life in the area. Others are less resigned to being voteless. In 1987 Walter Fauntroy, then the DC delegate, complained that the Soviet Union “embraces the citizens of Moscow with an equality that the US denies to every Washingtonian”. Today Representative Tom Davis of Virginia compares giving the District a representative to the pursuit of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr Davis is the sponsor of the DC Fairness in Representation Act, which is currently making its way through the House.
Supporters of the bill point out that although the District is not a state, it has more people than Wyoming and they pay taxes.
Posted by pauldavies on September 15, 2006
Comments
Whether it is a state or not should not even be an issue. No other federation denies representation in either house of its legislature to residents of its capital, and that includes all the federations that have a special capital territory like DC. Presumably the USA would not deprive its capital's residents, either, if the question of representation were not overlaid with race. It is a national shame, or it should be (albeit hardly the only one).
Posted by: Matthew Shugart at September 22, 2006 07:40 PM
We're democrats and believe in free speech, but we're also committed to civil and rational debate. We reserve the right to delete material posted to our site, but we hope and expect to exercise this right rarely if at all.
