The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LX: “Residents and Voters”

Despite having made a reasonably cogent point about the nature of the federal district and the reason for its existence – lacking in detail though it indeed may have been – one might accordingly have expected Senator Spessard Holland to then yield the floor. He had eulogized his failed poll tax amendment and he had drawn his colleagues’ attention to the motivations of the Framers. What more, in all sincerity, could a Senator possibly desire? Well, in Holland’s case, it seemed, there was at least one last point to make. It came, as it happened, at the end of what turned out to be a rather lengthy discussion. Senators James Eastland, Olin Johnston, and Barry Goldwater – proponents of states’ rights, all – just had to weigh in on Holland’s poll tax amendment, though it had already been defeated. But then, having addressed each of their objections as patiently as one supposes possible, Holland returned to the subject of D.C and its so-called intended purpose. First, he quite accurately observed that the proposed amendment then under consideration – which would have permitted the residents of the District to appoint their own presidential electors – would, if approved, have left the jurisdiction and its residents in almost exactly the opposite position to what the Framers originally intended. Recalling James Madison’s relevant assertions in the text of Federalist No. 43, one would seem to have no choice but to concur with this assessment.

While it was the aim of the Framers, according to Madison, to create an autonomous federal district specifically to ensure that those physically nearest to the seat of government would quite lack any stake in federal affairs – and so would have no call to use their proximity to unduly influence the federal government – they simultaneously had no desire to rob these same individuals of the right to be represented in their own municipal governments. For a time, of course, this intention was reflected in the administrative arrangement of the District itself. While D.C.’s residents had never been represented in federal affairs up through the summer of 1960, they did at least possess various forms of democratic municipal government – in the form of city and village councils – until they were finally all replaced by the Board of Commissioners in 1874. By granting the since completely disenfranchised inhabitants of the District the right to appoint three members of the Electoral College, the amendment then under discussion might accordingly have been described as effectively completing the inversion of the Framer’s intended arrangement that Congress had first began in the aftermath of the Civil War. Was this a particularly meaningful point on Senator Holland’s part? Arguably, it was not.

If Senator Holland had been advocating for the creation of a municipal home rule government in the District – something which the inhabitants thereof were sorely lacking – it might well have been a useful thing to bring up the relevant text of Federalist No. 43 as an encouragement to the assembled Senators. Input into the election of presidents was all well and good, of course, but what the people of D.C. needed far more urgently – as pointed out by certain of Holland’s colleagues – was the ability to shape the policies that more affected their daily lives. But this was not, as aforementioned, what Holland was trying to do. On the contrary, he was of the opinion that granting the District any federal representation was quite probably a mistake, and was using the words of the Framers to help convince his fellow senators of the same. This was not, one might argue, the most noble position to take. Nor, upon consideration, was it really all that logical. The generations of senators and congressmen who had served their various constituents in the almost two hundred years between the ratification of the Constitution and the moment of this meeting of the Senate had already deviated from the stated intentions of the Framers in a whole host of ways both subtle and dramatic. This present discussion, indeed, is a litany of those deviations, not the least of which was the alteration of the method of choosing Senators. Why were these changes acceptable, as far as Senator Holland was concerned, while the change under consideration in the summer of 1960 was not? Why was it seemingly permissible to part from the Framers in some cases but not in this one in particular?

Holland did end up answering these questions, though only indirectly. Continuing to speak on the subject of the District of Columbia and the propriety of granting it federal representation, he went on to assert that the question at hand was actually far more complex than the amendment’s supporters made it out. “No one can pretend for a moment [,]” he said,

That the area of the District of Columbia is comparable, on the question of citizenship of those who live here with, for example, the citizenship and the residents in the State so ably represented by the Senator from South Dakota, where those who live there are residents and voters by a great preponderance, certainly 98 or 99 percent. So one of the improvements of the amendment that comes back from the House is in this very matter. The representation of the District of Columbia in the electoral college is placed much more nearly in accord with the merits of the situation than was the case with the one against which the Senator from Florida voted.

What Holland seemed to mean by this, in essence, was that attempting to grant the residents of the District of Columbia representation even just in the Electoral College was very much complicated by the fact that a relatively small percentage of that selfsame population were both “residents and voters.” And it was, upon consideration, a rather strange phrase to use.

“Residents and voters,” he said. Certainly, there were many people – continue to be many people – who work in DC while actually residing in Virginia and Maryland. And there was also – is also – a significant cohort who do live in DC on a temporary basis – being political staffers or military personal – but who vote absentee in their respective home states. The first group could not reasonably be considered “residents,” of course, though they make daily use of public infrastructure as though they were. And while the second group could not be said to reside anywhere other than the District of Columbia – thus allowing them to be counted among its permanent population for the purpose of assigning Electoral College delegates – their real numbers simple aren’t likely to throw off the resulting apportionment. No, the simple fact of the matter is that most of the people who legally reside in the District – and this was as true in 1960 as it is today – do so on a permanent basis and are not registered to vote absentee in any other state. This bring us, naturally, to the second term that Senator Holland chose to deploy. Referring to the state of South Dakota by way of comparison with D.C., Holland observed of the former that, “those who live there are residents and voters by a great preponderance, certainly 98 or 99 percent.” In a jurisdiction in which, in keeping with congressional fiat, they were no voters, to whom, exactly, was Holland referring? Circa 1960, the ratio of voters to those who lived in the District on a permanent basis was surely something very near to zero percent. This fact, indeed, formed the crux of the discussion then underway in the Senate. For all intents and purposes, D.C. had no resident voters, something which the sponsors of S.J. Res. 39 were endeavoring to correct. So what, then, was Holland talking about? What comparison was he trying to make?

At this stage it would seem prudent to say a work or two about Democratic Senator Spessard Holland. A former Governor of Florida turned long-serving senator, he is perhaps best remembered for first helping to eliminate the poll tax in his home state in the late 1930s and then spending the best part of three decades championing a federal ban on the same while serving in Congress. But while Holland’s commitment to eliminating a patently unjust practice certainly warrants a degree of admiration – particularly given how often his stance against poll taxes brought him into conflict with his fellow Southern Democrats – one ought not to lose sight of where his priorities actually lay. Poll taxes, of course, were a favored tactic by which Southern Democrats in the 19^th and 20^th centuries attempted to keep members of the Black community from voting, specifically by taking advantage of the fact that most Black voters were also the victims of systemic economic discrimination. Being unable to easily afford a registration fee of one or two dollars – and being required to present a receipt of payment in order to cast a vote – Black residents of various Southern states were thus prevented from exercising any influence over the governments to which they were subject in such a way that did not run afoul of the explicit text of the 14^th Amendment. Holland’s opposition to this practice was certainly noteworthy in its day, owing to his status as both a Southerner and a Democrat. But the man did not stake out this position out of any sympathy for the Black community.

Holland, by his own admission, saw the poll tax primarily as a form of discrimination against poor whites, as a tool of political corruption, and as a barrier to voter turnout. Working-class Floridians, he said – and, by extensions, working-class Americans – should not have been prohibited from taking part in the electoral process simply because they could not spare the money to pay the necessary fees. Nor was it particularly sensible, he continued, to create and maintain what was essentially a ready-made system by which wealthy politicians, their backers, or those who wished to procure political influence could simply buy the votes of the otherwise disenfranchised poor by simply paying their poll taxes and directing their support a certain way. Democracy, in the American tradition, was not supposed to be the sole possession of the well-to-do or the plaything of certain well-heeled special interests, but rather the means by which the American people at large – regardless of their level of individual prosperity – could make known their will in the form of the public servants that they chose and the policies that they supported. Within this understanding of electoralism – to which Holland seemed very much to subscribe – the more people that could vote and did vote, the healthier and more legitimate the resulting government. Poll taxes stood in the way of this outcome and should accordingly have been done away with.

None of this is to say, mind you, that Senator Holland believed in the moral equality of all Americans. Indeed, several aspects of his public record would seem to indicate that quite the opposite was true. In 1954, for example, when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Holland was one of many Southerners then serving in Congress who responded by claiming that the Court had ruled mistakenly and that he and his colleagues would resist the dismantling of segregated education with every power at their disposal. This culminated in the drafting and release of the “Southern Manifesto” in 1956, to which Holland affixed his signature. For reference, the document in question famously declared of the Brown v. Board decision that,

This unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to the Constitution, is creating chaos and confusion in the States principally affected. It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.

It bears noting that this statement seeking to declare that the Supreme Court’s ruling was set to disrupt the so-called “amicable relations” that had “been created through 90 years of patient effort” between the white and Black communities was published just one year after the well-publicized lynching death of a Black youth named Emmett Till (1941-1955) in rural Mississippi. It also came a mere three years after several thousand white rioters laid siege to an apartment building in Cicero, Illinois because it contained a single Black family and just a decade after a series of race riots in the West Lawn neighborhood of Chicago, the purpose of which was to prevent Black veterans from settling in and amongst their white counterparts. In the years that followed, Holland also (unsurprisingly) came out against the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Of the first of these, which was famously filibustered by Southern Democrats, he declared, “We'll stand up and fight as long as we can.”

            Bearing all of this in mind, Senator Holland’s staunch opposition to the poll tax ought not to be misconstrued as any kind of liberal gesture on his part towards the advancement of civil rights or racial equality in the United States of America. Certainly, he was aware of the fact that the poll tax had originally been created for the purpose of depriving Black voters of the ability to cast a ballot. And he was also aware that its repeal would likely to lead to an increase in Black political participation. But it wasn’t as though poll taxes were all that kept Black voting rates down across the America South. Prejudicial registration policies, literacy tests, and the ever-present threat of violence more than accounted for their fair share of voter suppression. From Holland’s perspective, therefore, while banning poll taxes on the national level would almost certainly lead to more Black people casting ballots in states where decades of policymaking had intended to make such a thing next to impossible, a number of mechanisms would remain in place – legal or otherwise – to ensure that white majority control was not meaningfully threatened. Indeed, the elimination of the poll tax might actually contribute to this outcome. While low-income Black voters would still be disinclined to jump through procedural hurtles while also risking physical assault just to cast a ballot, low-income white voters would now be free to reinforce the existing power structure to an even greater degree.

            So what did Holland really mean, then, when he unfavorably compared the proportion of resident voters in South Dakota – “certainly 98 or 99 percent” of the total population, he reckoned – to that which he thought likely to be found in the District of Columbia? Given the comments he had previously made, and would go on to make, concerning topics like desegregation and civil rights, it would seem more than likely his base assumption was that those who would actually be able to vote in D.C. were bound to account for a relatively small portion of the population. Congress, after all, would remain the paramount authority in the District even if the residents thereof were granted the ability to vote in presidential elections. Specifically, power would remain in the hands of the House and Senate Committees on the District of Columbia. And since history had frequently shown the chairmanship of said bodies to devolve upon such unrepentant racists and hatemongers as Mississippi Senator Theodore G. Bilbo (1877-1947) and South Carolina Congressman John L. McMillan (1898-1979), one struggles to imagine the creation of an electoral regime that made a point of supporting and encouraging the full participation of the District’s majority Black population. On the contrary, such men would doubtless make a point of ensuring that it was no easier for a Black person to cast a ballot in D.C. than it was in their home states. And the result, of course, would be as Holland predicted. That is, the number of electors granted to the District of Columbia in proportion to its population would far exceed the total that the number of registered voters would otherwise indicate. That the relevant authorities in the House had sought to adjust this ratio – from allowing the District to choose as many electors as its population warranted to allowing it to choose no more than the least populous state – accordingly suited Senator Holland just fine, and was one of the key reasons why he was even mildly inclined to support the amendment then under discussion.

            Notwithstanding the evident ambivalence of men like Spessard Holland, the outright hostility of men like Joel Broyhill, and the racial animus, barely concealed, that animated them both, Congress did ultimately approve the amendment to the Constitution in question. On June 16^th, once Holland had had his say, a little more hemming and hawing followed, and then the yeas and nays were finally called. In the end, as stated in the Congressional Record, the thing was affirmed by a simple voice vote. Apparently, after having debated the matter for what at that point amounted to several months, a large enough majority of the assembled senators were content to vote in favor that the final result was not reasonably in doubt. And really, under the circumstances, this is not such a surprise. While the disposition of the District of Columbia and the wellbeing of its inhabitants were clearly topics about which certain members of Congress harbored particularly strong feelings – from Case and Keating’s passionate sympathy to Broyhill’s cynical self-interest and Holland’s reflexive bigotry – the passage of the original measure through the meatgrinder of the legislative process had rendered it digestible enough for even the most sensitive of palates.

The original sponsors of S.J. Res. 39 – Clarence Case, Kenneth Keating, and J. Glenn Beall – had been forced to watch as their attempt to fully enfranchise the District’s citizens was reduced to a pale shadow of its former self, to be sure. But at least they succeeded in granting them some voice in the nation’s political affairs. And while the likes of Congressman Broyhill had shown no objection to the text of the original resolution – “The right to vote for President and Vice President [,]” he said, “does not infringe on the rights of the other people of this great Nation. If we granted the people of the District of Columbia representation in the House and Senate, it would not infringe on the rights of the other people of this Nation” – his interests were nevertheless served by its having been cut down in committee. An ardent opponent of home rule in D.C. and a racist and a segregationist who did not believe in Black equality, it suited Broyhill just fine, regardless of what he might have said to the contrary, to extend political rights to the District’s inhabitants haltingly, if at all. Even Spessard Holland, who had just been forced to witness yet another defeat on the part of his anti-poll tax crusade, was able to make peace with the resolution in question. While he remained uncertain – for what it was worth – whether the Framers would have approved, and while he yet maintained that the District of Columbia presented potential reformers with a more complicated problem than they tended to let on, he was satisfied enough with the efforts of the House to moderate the original proposal to withhold his opposition and allow the final resolution to pass. And so, much reduced, it did indeed pass.