The specific process which ultimately gave rise to the 23rd Amendment in 1960 arguably started with a mere trickle: a resolution from the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Read on January 7th, it requested, “The Congress of the United States to support and enact legislation to give the people of the District of Columbia the right to elect the officials to administer their local affairs, to vote in presidential elections, and to have voting representation in the Congress of the United States [.]” While nothing more was said about the idea at that particular moment in time, the mention of it seemed to have planted the seed of something which would soon enough grow much larger. Two weeks later, in the midst of a lengthy discussion on campaign finance reform, election law, and the exact parameters of the Hatch Act (1939), Senator J. Glenn Beall of Maryland (1894-1971) observed that, “Unfortunately the citizens in the District of Columbia do not have the right of the franchise, which I think a great many of us favor giving to them.” To this, Senator Thomas C. Hennings of Missouri (1903-1960) notably replied, “A great many of us are in favor of that.” Then, on January 28th, Senator Kenneth Keating of New York (1900-1975) finally stepped forward and made a proposal of his own. In response to a series of amendments put forward by a group of Senators led by Jacob Javits of New York (1904-1986) to Senate Joint Resolution 39 – the intent of which, as originally introduced the previous year by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee (1903-1963), was to allow governors to fill vacant House seats by appointment – Keating offered another amendment which, “Would give to the residents of the District of Columbia the right to vote for electors, and also to be represented in the Congress.” The conversation, at last, had begun.
It did not take place in a particularly timely
fashion, of course. This was, after all, the United States Congress. But
persistence, in such a forum, can and does pay off. Accordingly, in the midst
of a related discussion on the poll tax amendment being proposed by Florida
Senator Spessard Holland (1892-1971) on February 2nd, Senator
Keating finally did get around to explaining just what it was he sought. “The
Senator from South Dakota, the Senator from Maryland and I [,]” he said,
referring specifically to Francis H. Case (1896-1962) and the aforementioned
Mr. Beall, “in the proposed amendment endeavor to give the Senate the
opportunity to give to the residents of the District of Columbia the right to
vote for President and Vice President and representation in Congress.” The
reason for this, he went on to explain, was simple enough. “The continued
massive disqualification of all the residents of the District of Columbia from
their right to participate in our electoral processes,” he said,
Is inexcusable. It is unreasonable.
It is undemocratic. We can and must seize this opportunity to remedy this
deplorable state of affairs. I would hope that this was one defect in our
electoral processes which Members of this body from all sections of our Nation
would enthusiastically join in correcting.
Granted, there
seemed to be little to gain from conferring basic political rights upon the
residents of the District of Columbia. “The area […] is small [,]” Keating
observed. “Only local inhabitants would be affected by this reform. But the
principles at stake are large. Our action would have international impact. We
would be demonstrating to the whole world that in America democracy begins at
home—that we practice what we preach.” At a time of heightened tension on the
global battlefield of ideology and diplomacy – which the early 1960s arguably
was – this was surely no small claim. Every chink in the “armor of democracy”
was viewed by the powerbrokers of the so-called “Western World” as granting
unwarranted advantage to the propaganda machine of the Communist bloc of
nations. And the disenfranchisement of the inhabitants of the very seat of the
United States Government was exactly the kind of unforced error that
increasingly paranoid American statesmen were eager to avoid. It was a small
thing, as Keating pointed out, affecting only a few hundred thousand people.
But the significance, in terms of the ideological value of either granting D.C.
additional political rights or not, may well have been quite vast.
Keating did not only argue in terms
of symbolism, of course. Like any good politician, he brought numbers to bear
as well. First, he explained, it was indisputably the case that,
The population of the District of
Columbia exceeds the population of 12 States which have full representation
rights in both the House and Senate. These States are New Hampshire, Vermont,
North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, New
Mexico, Alaska, and Hawaii. Indeed, the District of Columbia has more residents
than the States of Alaska, Nevada, and Wyoming, combined. These States
including their Senators, have nine Representatives in Congress; the District
of Columbia has none.
Second, he
continued, was the fact that,
The residents of the District of
Columbia pay well over $350 million annually in Federal taxes. This is more tax
money than is contributed by the residents of any one of 25 States having a
total representation of 148 Members in the Congress. Taxation without
representation is still the lot of our local citizens.
And third – perhaps
the most calculated to elicit a forceful response – was the implication of
residents’ military service and its apparent value in the eyes of the nation. “More
than 100,000 men and women who lived in the District of Columbia served in our
armed forces during World War II [,]” Keating keenly noted.
This was a greater contribution in
manpower to the defense of our Nation than was made by 14 States. Many of these
brave souls made the supreme sacrifice in our country's battles. It is shameful
that these courageous men and women who fought and died for freedom could not
enjoy its essential quality in their own homeland.
Combined, the
Senator asserted,
These are shameful facts. Here are
several hundred thousand Americans who are called upon to pay taxes, to serve
in our armed forces, and to fulfill all the other obligations of citizenship,
but who are denied one of its most sacred privileges. How much longer shall we
permit this stain on our democracy to remain uncleansed? I would seize any
opportunity to erase this black mark.
These were, undeniably, very
powerful arguments on Senator Keating’s part. Separate from the ideological
significance of denying the electoral franchise to the inhabitants of the
capital city of the nation which claimed for itself the title of “apostle of
democracy,” the way that the District of Columbia fitted into the larger
infrastructure of American political life was deeply inconsistent with how
nearly everything else worked. What, in essence, was the point of holding a
decennial census for the purpose of very carefully allocating representation in
the lower house of Congress if, for several hundred thousand American citizens
who happened to live in a certain city in a certain region, none of this applied?
What significance did the phrase “no taxation without representation” really
have any more if Congress could extract over three hundred million dollars annually
from a given community without the slightest intention of giving them a say in
how it was spent? And really, what was the point of offering to serve one’s
country – to the extent of risking severe injury and possibly even death – if
taking up residence in one part of that country meant losing a significant
portion of one’s basic civil rights? The fact that these kinds of questions,
circa 1960, could not easily be answered was doubtless precisely the reason
Senator Keating sought to prompt them. Nearly everything about the way that the
inhabitants of the District of Columbia were treated politically was at odds
with the way that the United States of America was supposed to function. Their
plight, to be sure, was not the only thing one could point to at that moment in
history as an example of the inconsistency with which the laws and principles
of the American republic were practically applied. But it was, undeniably, one
of the most glaring. And once which, Keating believed, he and his colleagues
had the power, the opportunity, and the responsibility to fix.
At this point – evidently desirous
of adding his own insights to the record – the aforementioned Senator Case
asked his cosponsor Keating if he might yield the floor. Naturally, Keating
agreed to do so, at which point Case offered several additional justifications
for the passage of the relevant amendment. Having been a member of the Senate
Committee on the District of Columbia between 1953 and 1955, Case had long
since come to the opinion that genuine home rule – that is, the creation of a
locally-elected executive and legislature for the District of Columbia – was
the only real remedy to D.C.’s democratic deficit. But as he had tried and
failed for several years to introduce legislation to that effect, by 1960 he
was forced to conclude that home rule, in the near-term, simply wasn’t
possible. In consequence, he explained, if Congress were to continue exercising
exclusive legislative jurisdiction therein, then it was only just to give,
The District of Columbia citizens an
opportunity to have representation in the Congress, which has this exclusive
legislative jurisdiction. That is why to that extent this proposal would give
the people of the District of Columbia a voice in their own government.
If Congress was to
be the only legislature with power over the District, in short, it seemed only
proper to allow its inhabitants to be represented therein. That so many of
those same inhabitants were, as Keating pointed out, veterans of the United
States Armed Forces was only added incentive. “The city of Washington [,]” Case
went on to say,
Becomes the home of a greater number
of retired officers of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force than any other city
in the Nation, by reason of the fact that many of those who have served in the
military forces lose their residence in their native States, and also by reason
of the fact that many attractions exist for living in the city of Washington. But
when they reside in Washington, they find themselves deprived of the right to
vote. I have always felt that those who take the risks involved in the military
services certainly are entitled to have a voice in the affairs of the country
they have served.
This latter observation was the product of a rather more recent development then that which Keating had cited. Nonetheless, it was an exceedingly apt one.
Though the United States had historically prided itself on maintaining only a small peacetime professional military which would then grow to the appropriate size during wartime by way of volunteer enlistments, the events of WWII and the subsequent emergence of the Cold War brought about a tremendous change in the nation’s permanent defensive posture. Between the expansion of the national security apparatus, the creation of the Defense Department, and the increasing integration of political and military decision-making, more serving military officers than ever were required to be stationed in the nation’s capital at all times, in leadership as well as staff positions. And as Case pointed out, while these same soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen might formally be residents of a particular state or territory, their long-term presence in the District of Columbia, should they decide to establish residency there, effectively robbed them of the ability to participate in the democratic government that they had ostensibly pledged their lives to defend. Plainly, this was an unjust outcome, and one which the Framers could not possibly had intended. While military service certainly didn’t entitle anyone to a greater share of the fruit of democracy than the average, non-serving citizen, nor was it at all sensible to effectively forbid active servicemembers or veterans from claiming their rights as citizens simply because their service required them to reside in a certain city or because, upon completing their service, they chose to retire there.
Having thus expanded upon Senator Keating’s argument concerning military personnel, Senator Case then proceeded to do much the same with his colleague’s point about the potential “international impact” of granting political rights to the District of Columbia. In the post-war era, he explained, the United States was, “The great devotee of freedom and the great apostle of representative government [.]” The rest of the world, he believed, looked to the American republic to be the best possible example of the principles that it daily preached, and it was to the nation’s lasting deficit that a survey of its own capital revealed such blatant and deep-seated hypocrisy. If the United States Government would deny to the inhabitants of the city it called home the same privileges it was endeavoring to convince the nations of the wider world to respect, what reason should anyone have had to listen to America’s pleas? In light of the democratic deficit continually suffered by the residents of the District of Columbia, how much could the American people really claim to believe in the essential principles of representative democracy? Such contradictory behavior, Case accordingly explained,
Compromises our position in every
international gathering and in every international endeavor. To say that
representative government is good for the new countries in Africa and in Asia,
but that in the Capital City of the United States itself the residents should
not have the right to participate in their own government is an inconsistency
which weakens the position of the United States in every international
conference today.
If, as
aforementioned, the United States truly was in the midst of an ideological
battle for global supremacy – and Case certainly had every reason to believe
that it was – then every disadvantage, every weakness, every flaw had the
potential to be devastating. The inability of D.C. residents to express
themselves in a democratic forum certainly had the potential to be just that,
particularly as common explanations consistently failed to move beyond the
apparent necessity of sacrificing the rights of some in order to protect the
rights of others. Far too often, even just in the history of 20th
century, such logic had been deployed to explain away the most brutal
exploitation imaginable, and it did the cause of the United States no favors to
find itself implicitly validating that same rationale.
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