Eclectique Citizen: A request to support the DC House Voting Rights Act
Washington, D.C. residents need your help tomorrow, Monday, February 23. Senate Bill 160, the DC House Voting Rights Act, is coming up for a vote. This bill will give Washington, DC residents a single representative vote in the U.S. Congress.
The DC House Voting Rights Act is a bipartisan legislation that would bring congressional voting representation to DC residents for the first time ever. Please note this is not a bill to make DC a state. There’s no need to worry about the stars coliding on the blue field. The DC Voting Rights Act will give DC residents what every citizen is entitled to — a voice/vote.
It’s as simple as this: DC residents pay taxes, they serve in the military, we have a national guard, we vote for POTUS, and all our decisions for us are made by someone else. That’s taxation without representation. Remember, the U.S. exists because of the founding fathers’ refusal to be taxed by a government that would not let citizens have a say in their own destiny and governance.
Please urge friends and family throughout the country to contact their Congressional representatives on Monday, Feb. 23 in support of the DC House Voting Rights Act (Senate Bill 160). The main Capitol switchboard is 202-225-3121. You can also write your representative through this link: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
According to DC Vote, newly elected NC Senator Kay Hagan is undecided. If you have any friends or family in North Carolina, please ask them to contact Sen. Hagan’s office. North Carolinians should call her Raleigh office at 919-856-4630. Her e-mail address is Senator_Hagan@hagan.senate.gov and her Washington office is 202-224-6432.
For more information, visit www.dcvote.org.
1citizenw
wrote on 23 February 2009 at 12:51
Founder George Mason said, “No free government, or the blessings of liberty can be preserved to any people, but by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”
James Madison said “The people were in fact, the fountain of all power, and by resorting to them, all difficulties were got over. They could alter constitutions as they pleased. It was a principle in the Bills of rights, that first principles might be resorted to.”
Our Constitution is a document written in an attempt to “form a more perfect Union”. One of the basic, bedrock fundamental principles upon which democracy and its variations (such as a democratic republic) are based is “Consent of the Governed”. Consent is determined by majority consensus, with special protections afforded to the rights of minorities. One of the most basic implications of this approach is that “the people” consist of ALL of the people. If a minority of the people are excluded from even participating in the process of decisionmaking by the majority, that exclusion tends to erode the legitimacy of the entire system.
Such is the situation of the long-suffering residents of the District of Columbia. Excluded from participation in the national decisionmaking process nearly from the begining of the Republic by the tyranny of the majority (those living in the fifty states), their exclusion (along with the now-corrected one-time exclusion of blacks, women, and young adults under the age of 21) has tended to erode the legitimacy of the rule of law, under self-evident, bedrock, fundamental democratic principles such as Consent of the Governed.
Consent of the Governed has not been afforded denizens of the District since 1801. The current Constitution is hardly even their Constitution today, since they have not been afforded an opportunity to participate in decisionmaking that resulted in Amendments 12 through 27 (since 1801). The Courts, likewise, are hardly even their courts, since they have not had representatives with an opportunity to participate in decisions (advise and consent) regarding their staffing and operation, since 1801. Finally, the Congress is hardly even their Congress, since they have had no vote, and precious little voice, in either chamber, since 1801.
The denizens of DC, as part of the original thirteen colonies, are unrebuttably the same posterity, the same progeny, as those currently residing in the fifty states, for whom, as an indivisible Nation, the Founders pledged their “Lives, their Fortunes, and their Sacred Honor” to secure Liberty. Of that there can be no argument. Other territories (Puerto Rico, Pacific Islands, etc have a more tenuous claim on that position).
The Declaratory Act of 1766 was an attempt by the British nation to arrogate to itself an Absolute Power over an unrepresented minority “in all cases whatsoever”. Similarly, the District Clause attempts to arrogate to the American nation Absolute Power over an unrepresented minority “in all cases whatsoever”. Both cases are highly rebuttable, since both seek tyrannical Absolute Power by the majority (and we know what Absolute Power does) over an unrepresented minority. The bedrock principle of “Consent of the Governed” is violated by such unwarranted assertions.
“VI. That elections of members to serve as representatives of the people, in Assembly, ought to be free; and that all men having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage, and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses without their own consent, or that of their representatives so elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assented for the public good.”
Virginia Declaration of Rights, June, 1776
Continued, persistent violation of this fundamental, bedrock, first principle of modern democratic government undermines and erodes the very legitimacy of the rule of government over those excluded from participation in our representative, democratic, republican system of government. The nation must address this deficiency in our Constitution, with the goal of forming a More Perfect Union.