Monday, February 12, 2007

DC wants to be a state

Daniel Kotler reports:
Earlier this month, on January 9th, Rep. Norton (D-DC) and Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) reintroduced the DC Fair and Equal Voting Rights Act (HR 328), a measure which trades a voting seat in the House of Representatives for strongly Democratic DC for an additional seat for strongly Republican Utah.
It seems like a lousy deal for the Republicans, because Utah would just get the seat from 2008 to 2010. After that it could goto a Democrat state, while DC keeps its Democrat seat.

A commenter points out:
It's worth noting that the District of Columbia has fewer voters than all 50 states, and fewer people living in it than 49 of the 50 states (and in a few years, it will have fewer people than all 50 states).

So it's not clear why it should be treated like a state when it comes to representation in the Senate (meaning it would receive 2 senators).

Why should the District, which has less than 0.2 percent of the nation's population, receive 2 percent of the senate (that is, 2 senators out of 102?)?

That's 10 times what it would be entitled to based on population alone.

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