The legislators approved the proposal with a ratio of 232 for and 180 against, voting mostly according to the party line. There are about 700,000 people living in the federal district, more than, for example, in the states of Wyoming or Vermont.
However, local residents do not have their representation in the Senate and send only one non-voting representative to the House of Representatives. That is why they have long claimed that they are denied the basic political rights enjoyed by all other Americans.
Car license plates in Washington even carry the slogan “end taxation without representation”, referring to one of the main slogans of the American Revolution, with which American colonists protested against British domination.
Republicans opposed the proposal
However, Republicans accuse Democrats of wanting to promote precinct status only for reasons of power, and that the intention of the American founding fathers has always been for the capital to have a different status from other states. Democrats, on the other hand, argue that Republicans are defending the district’s statehood because the local population is strongly leaning toward Democrats.
The bill would create a new state called Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, in honor of former slave Frederick Douglass, who subsequently became a famous abolitionist. According to the proposal, the federal district would shrink to include only the National Mall, along with the White House, the Congress Building, the Supreme Court, federal monuments, and other federal agencies in the vicinity.
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