Posts about Voting Rights

It's hard to get more high-profile than running for presidential office. Would anyone know who Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich were had they not run unsuccessful campaigns? Most protest ideas are illegal, unworkable, or require a large amount of dedication from many people.

This only requires DC residents to vote a little differently and for one person to dedicate a couple of years to the effort. Because Williams would be campaigning in such a small area, the campaign would be cheap and he'd have time to talk to just about every voter in the District.

Williams is a great choice. Unlike Fenty, he left office still relatively popular. Unlike Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton or Mayor Vincent Gray, he's not busy filling another office; without the indication that he might run for some other office, he has no need to curry favor with the Democratic Party.

There are plenty of other individuals that fit this description, such as Sharon Ambrose and Carol Schwartz, but he is really the best possible candidate in my mind: He's smart, telegenic, and without scandal.

It'd be better if Williams hadn't joined so eagerly in the Board of Trade's task force on WMATA governance, which met in secret and recommended diminishing the public's role in Metro's decisionmaking, but that's not a fatal flaw.

Williams would get plenty of opportunities to talk to the national media about why he's running and about DC's disenfranchisement. In the months-long, 24-hour-a-day news coverage, every media outlet will be looking for stories to cover. Williams' candidacy would certainly be one of them. If he's polling well in DC, and looks to win, as I think he would, he could even argue that he should be included in the debates.

If he went on to win DC, that would be covered throughout election night and in post-election coverage. Solutions to DC's second-class status range from statehood, to retrocession, to a constitutional amendment, but Williams wouldn't even need to pick a preferred tactic. He would merely need to advocate that there be a tactic to make DC voters whole. This means representation in both houses, as well as a voice in constitutional amendments and contingent elections.

But what if he were to win and Obama needed those three electors? Most voters in DC, if recent voting is any indication, will not want to put a Republican in the White House just to protest their lack of representation. Williams could campaign with the promise that, in such a situation, he'd instruct his electors to vote for the Democratic nominee, as long as that nominee and the Democratic party promise to make DC suffrage a priority with real, concrete goals.

Let's draft Anthony Williams for the presidential campaign. Let me be the first to ask him to run. You can also ask him to run at this Facebook page.

For example, in the elections last month, two American University freshmen ran write-in campaigns for ANC seats. ANC 3D chair Tom Smith filed complaints against both of them with the Board of Elections and Ethics, although one, Deon Jones, managed to get elected to the long-vacant 3D07 seat.

The other, Tyler Sadonis, who was running for Smith's own seat in 3D02, lost, although according to Smith himself nearly 60 AU students showed up to vote in that precinct. This was an unusually high turnout, but many students were prevented from voting by poll watchers specifically targeting students.

Smith has since called (huge PDF) for the repeal of voting reforms passed by the DC Council last year, including same-day registration and early voting, citing the fact that some AU students attempted to register without the proper identification.

Even if all 60 AU students who tried to vote in 3D02 had been allowed to, Smith still would have been easily reelected with 228 votes. But those students should have been welcomed and encouraged to participate in their local election, rather than intimidated and targeted for challenges.

Nor is this an isolated incident: AU student Sami Green says she's tried to get on the ballot in 3D07 eight times in the past two years. Sometimes she failed to get enough signatures, but other times her petitions were rejected on various technical grounds.

Meanwhile, down in Burleith, neighbors are vociferously opposing Georgetown University's 10-year development plan, which would expand graduate student enrollment from 6,275 to 8,750 while adding only 120 beds on campus. According to Burleith residents, the student presence in their neighborhood is already intolerable, between late-night parties and "walk-by noise." You have to sympathize with them; apparently they were unaware they were moving in next to a 200-year-old university.

The Burleith and Georgetown residents demand that the university build more on-campus housing to keep students away from them. But what if students want to live off-campus? Unfortunately for them, there's no practical reason Councilmember Jack Evans should even consider what students want, because it's mostly the residents who get to vote. Indeed, Evans told the Burleith Citizens Association that he supports them and opposes the campus plan. Why should he say otherwise when the political incentives are so clear?

Up in College Park, the University of Maryland's neighbors have shown a similar hostility towards the idea of students living outside the confines of campus. Elected officials are currently trying to prevent the construction of a residential project on the Maryland Book Exchange site, across the street from the main entrance to UMD. They may or may not be right that the project would adversely affect locals, but there's little question it would be good for the 830 students who'd be able to live there. Unfortunately they aren't really a party to the debate.

Some may argue that college students are free to register to vote at their college address or even run for local office if they meet residency requirements. (Others incorrectly warn of legal consequences for students who try to register at their college address.) But hostility and obstructionism on the part of local residents can be discouraging, and the transient nature of student life means many students are still getting to know their adopted neighborhood when their four years are up.

Unfortunately there are few easy options for increasing student representation in local decision-making. Foremost among them is gerrymandering, which can create a seat on a local body that's effectively reserved for students. Gerrymandering is what created SMD 3D07, the seat won by Deon Jones. Jones will join Georgetown student Jake Sticka as the only two college students serving on ANCs. That's less than 1% of the 276 commissioners citywide, in a city where college students represent nearly 15% of the population.

An intercollegiate campaign called DC Students Speak was launched last year partly to correct this imbalance. They've identified 11 SMDs with majority student populations that are represented by non-student commissioners. The campaign hopes to register and mobilize enough students to correct this imbalance somewhat.

For their part, college neighbors should be more welcoming of students, especially those interested in getting involved in their communities. It benefits everyone if DC-area college students graduate with an attachment to their adopted home, since they may choose to stick around and contribute to the tax base. And it's the right thing to do. Everyone deserves a voice, and only by making everyone's voice heard can we build a city that works for everyone.

It's for these reasons that I always wonder if the District is better off than many other jurisdictions, even despite living under the shadow of Congress and despite the fiscal challenges. With the possible exception of Native American reservations, no other municipality in the country has near-total authority over all levels of local government.

Though Congress seems to enjoy interfering in purely local affairs, especially hot-button political issues, Senators and Representatives largely leave the District alone in the day-to-day operation of the city, exactly as intended by the Home Rule Act. Many state legislatures meddle even more, like New York's which denied New York City the right to even install cameras on its buses.

Nowhere can the benefits of the District's singular authority be better witnessed than in the city's transportation plans. Thanks to DDOT's authority over most aspects of transportation planning, the city has instituted a number of new projects at a breakneck pace. More bike lanes? Done. Express buses and priority corridors? Sure thing. Pedestrian safety enhancements? Intermodal transportation hubs? First in the nation to have bike sharing? Yes, yes, and yes.

Even the District's most controversial new transportation project, the 37-mile streetcar network, has been made more streamlined with only one level of government to approve and oversee construction of the new system. The District's comparatively small 13-member legislature (the 550,000 residents of Wyoming have a whopping 90 state representatives and senators) creates a local government with the potential to be very responsive to the demands of residents across the entire city. Just look at what GGW and other transportation activists were able to do in a few hours to save streetcar funding.

As stories emerge about the disconnect in priorities between our neighboring local jurisdictions and their respective state governments, the District benefits by having only a single level of local government to make decisions. The residents of Montgomery and Prince George's counties had to beg Annapolis to provide more funds for WMATA and ensure support for long-stalled infrastructure projects like the Purple Line. And, as recently reported, the state government in Richmond initiated a power grab to take away one of the last remaining vestiges of local government in Northern Virginia by demanding half the Commonwealth's seats on the WMATA Board of Directors.

If Washington were located in either state, residents might have been left waiting for decades before we saw even a single streetcar, expanded bike sharing service, or other necessary infrastructure projects due to competing state priorities. Does the District's fiscal situation have serious deficiencies? Yes. However, Washington's unique municipal government is perfect for advancing the type of progressive, forward-thinking projects in transportation, urban design, and economic development that could become a model for the rest of the nation.

DC Voting Rights activists should work with the residents of Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) (and even American Samoa whose residents are not citizens but rather Nationals. Despite that, they do have a stake in this if they ever aspire to full citizenship) to create a lasting, flexible solution.

We need a Territorial Representation Amendment. The amendment as I see it would read like this:

Section 1: Congress may designate any Territory, Commonwealth or District of the United States, or a combination thereof, as a Represented Territory; or add such to an existing Represented Territory, so long as there is no more than one Represented Territory that is less populous than the least populous State at the time of its designation.

Section 2: For purposes of representation in the House of Representatives, each Represented Territory shall be treated as though it were a State.

Section 3: If there is at least one Represented Territory as designated under section 1, then for purposes of representation in the Senate, and election of the President and Vice President, the combination of all Represented Territories shall be treated as though it were a State.

Section 4: For purposes of article V of this Constitution when the mode of ratification is by state legislatures, the combination of all Represented Territories shall count as one State and use a convention where each Represented Territory is represented proportionally.

Section 5: The twenty-third article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

This amendment would enable Congress to grant all U.S. Citizens full representation without having to make tiny Guam into it's own state. And the result would have the combined benefits of upholding America's value for representative democracy, without any question of constitutionality, while being more politically palatable than the other courses of action.

If it were ratified, the U.S. would likely end up with three Represented Territories. One for DC, one for Puerto Rico and one for all of the rest. DC would get one house member, Puerto Rico would get six, and the other territories would share one. All of these areas would vote for the same two Senators, both of whom would likely come from the larger Puerto Rico. The electoral college votes could be divided up using the Congressional District or proportional vote method.

The amendment would be more politically viable because it comes with greater political parity and would include many new allies. In Puerto Rico, both parties are competitive. Their Governor is Republican, but their delegate is Democratic. The other territories are more mixed—the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands is heavily Republican, for example—so this would not create two de facto Senate seats for the Democratic Party, as adding DC by itself would.

Additionally, it would result in a net loss for the District in the Electoral College, where they're overrepresented anyway, making the law more appealing to strategy-minded Republicans. Parity has been a key part of adding new states and is the reason they were often admitted as pairs. Furthermore, Puerto Ricans and other islanders become natural allies to the cause and can supplement the national organization needed to ratify an amendment in 38 legislatures in seven years.

While the idea of having two Senators who are likely from Puerto Rico might not seem appealing to DC residents, it is structurally no different than having two Senators, both of whom are from Maryland, as would happen in retrocession. And DC would still make up one eighth of the combined Representative Territories (CRT) which would make it foolish for office seekers to ignore. Furthermore, if Puerto Rico ever obtains statehood or independence, DC would find itself the largest piece of the CRT.

The CRT would be able to ratify amendments by electing representatives to a Territorial Convention and would be able to vote as one state in the rare event that there is another Contingent Election.

Such an amendment would not only make residents of the Nation's Capital full citizens, but it could, once and for all, correct the unseemly problem of having any citizens, in a country that prides itself on its democratic principals, who are not allowed representation—and have no reasonable chance of getting it—solely because of which part of the country they live in.