DC Statehood is a Distraction from the Real Problem

Look, I get it: while Washington, DC, remains outside any legally defined “state,” its three-quarters of a million residents, over half of them Black, remain unrepresented in the Federal Government. That’s egregiously unjust. DC has more residents than Wyoming or Vermont, and only marginally fewer than Alaska or North Dakota, yet it required the Twenty-Third Amendment to even let them vote for President. That seriously sucks.

Worse, the specific arguments getting airtime now against DC statehood are frequently racist, and consistently political. Few national-grade pundits willingly admit they don’t want Black Washingtonians voting, but they’ll openly state that DC, which overwhelmingly votes Democratic, might create a permanent Blue majority in America’s Legislative Branch. They’d rather disenfranchise Black Washingtonians than devise a platform that Washingtonians would vote for.

Yet despite this, despite the naked partisan hackery and dog-whistle racism, I can’t support DC statehood. Both the Constitution, which provides for a Federal District outside any state’s jurisdiction, and the Residence Act of 1790, which drew the District of Columbia’s borders, assumed the goodness of putting the capital outside any individual state. This wasn’t frivolous; London’s status as Britain’s capital has always been sketchy, and functionally disenfranchised the provinces.

Putting the capital inside any state would create a feedback loop of imbalanced power. The first fear is that the federal government would favor the state that houses it. Less obviously, the state could exercise undue influence over the federal government by tactically withholding necessary services and infrastructure maintenance. To offset the political threats the state and capital hold over one another, they could easily establish an unhealthy reciprocal relationship.

“But Kevin,” statehood advocates have said, “statehood would only involve the city. The federal buildings and government offices would remain separate.” Okay, but legislators, judges, and their staffers don’t live in federal buildings. Unless we wanted federal employees to reside in government dormitories, they’d still have to commute to and from the city daily. They’d still be, functionally, resident in one state, defeating the purpose of an outside capital.

Don’t misunderstand me: the current situation is pretty awful. We’re withholding representation from over 700,000 US citizens in DC. Similarly, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and our Pacific Territories are rife with citizens denied the lawful vote on procedural grounds written by dead White guys in powdered wigs and knee breeches. The Founding Fathers weren’t omniscient; they failed to anticipate how the US has grown and evolved since 1789.

Moreover, the situation continues evolving. As recently as the 1990s, America’s legislators lived full-time in DC while Congress was in session. That means they rubbed elbows in their off hours; Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill and President Reagan famously met for non-political drinks on weekends. But since Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Republican Revolution,” legislators have flown home on weekends. DC has become someplace they visit, not someplace they live.

This raises a question: in today’s hypertechnological environment, does the federal government even need a capital anymore? Or just one? South Africa has separate capitals for its branches of government. What if the Presidency and executive bureaucracy remained in DC, but the Supreme Court met in, say, Salem, Oregon? And Congress could establish a rota of meeting locations, perhaps in state capitals. Physical proximity isn’t necessary for good government anymore.

Our current federal system is outdated. It was written to govern a cash-poor agrarian society where most technology involved mules pulling something: carts, mill wheels, water screws. Our state lines were drawn in the 18th and 19th centuries. Texas (statehood in 1845) and California (1850) are literally older than some European nations, including Germany and Italy (both unified in 1871). Los Angeles County has more residents than 41 entire states.

Yes, DC residents deserve representation. So do residents of Los Angeles, New York City, and Dallas. Several states, especially California and Texas, but also New York, Florida, and Ohio, could profitably use their constitutionally mandated authority to separate into several smaller states, which would be cheaper and easier to govern. In other words, DC statehood is a temporary Band-Aid on a federal system that needs fundamental, systemic overhaul.

I’ll never deny that the current system hurts DC residents. Like the other problems I’ve listed, it reflects a federal government born of compromise, based on outdated assumptions, and essentially unchanged in 232 years. I suspect Democrats hope, and Republicans fear, that DC statehood will provide key votes to expedite overdue repairs. I fear that, like another stimulus check, it’ll steer energy away from real reforms.