Fact Sheet: Voting Rights in the District of Columbia
March 11, 2003
Ensure That Votes Mean Something: Provide D.C. Residents With Full Congressional Representation
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) is working to fulfill the promise of democracy for our fellow citizens who live in our nation's capital. Sadly, because residents of Washington, D.C. lack full, voting representation in the U.S. House and Senate, they are literally mere spectators to this democracy, rather than active participants.
LCCR has long believed that it is fundamentally unfair to have two distinct classes of citizens in our country - one that enjoys the right to full civic participation and the other that does not. Yet, even today, such an inequality continues to exist right in our nation's capital.
- U.S. citizens in D.C. are currently the only American citizens who must pay federal income taxes without being provided with any meaningful voice in Congress to defend their interests.
- D.C. residents must settle for a nonvoting delegate in the House, and powerless "shadow" U.S. Representatives and Senators who are not officially recognized or funded by Congress.
- The voices of D.C. residents are even stifled with regard to matters at the local level, as locally-passed laws must be sent to Congress for review.
Until District of Columbia voters are provided with Congressional representation and the right to self-determination, their votes will be little more than symbolic, and American democracy will never be truly "complete."
To address the unfair treatment of D.C. residents, LCCR works closely with DC Vote, a coalition of national and grassroots organizations dedicated to providing D.C. residents with full voting representation in Congress. Last year, LCCR Executive Director Wade Henderson testified in a hearing before a Senate Committee about the importance of providing D.C. residents with a voice in Congress - and about how the status quo flatly contradicts one of the most fundamental principles of civil rights on which our system of government is based. LCCR also helped organize, and participated in, a day of Congressional visits to raise awareness about the need to provide D.C. residents with voting representation in Congress.
Thanks in part to the efforts of civil rights organizations such as LCCR, a Senate Committee chaired by Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) voted late last year in favor of legislation, the "No Taxation Without Representation Act," to give D.C. residents their long-overdue voice in Congress. The legislative session, however, ran out before further action could be taken on the proposal. Nonetheless, LCCR will continue in its efforts to raise awareness about how the denial of Congressional representation to D.C. residents continues to undermine the decades-long struggle of the civil rights movement to provide every American the right to vote. LCCR will also support a D.C. voting rights bill when it is reintroduced in the 108th Congress.
