DC pays every federal tax. It has no vote in Congress.
Washington, DC is a federal district, not a state. More than 700,000 residents pay income, payroll, Medicare, and Social Security taxes, serve on federal juries, and are drafted in every war.
In return they get one delegate who can speak on the House floor but cannot cast a recorded vote. No other established democracy treats the residents of its capital this way.
An act of Congress, not a fact of nature.
In 1801 the Organic Act moved DC from Maryland and Virginia to federal control. Residents who had voted as citizens of those states no longer could. The city was small then. It isn't now.
"The people of the District of Columbia are not second-class citizens. They are as much a part of this nation as the residents of any state."President John F. Kennedy · 1961
Every right DC has, DC organized for.
America turns 250. Its capital still can't vote.
The country started with one demand: no taxation without representation. Two and a half centuries later, 700,000 people in Washington, DC pay every federal tax and send no one to Congress who can vote.
U.S. Census 2024 · IRS Data Book, Table 5, FY 2024
Statehood is the cleanest fix. It is not the only one.
Statehood — two senators and a voting House member — is the cleanest answer to a question open since 1801. It is also a long fight that runs through the Senate.
But much of what DC experiences as federal overreach isn't required by the Constitution — it's ordinary statute. We're building the case to separate legitimate federal authority over the seat of government from federal control of DC's municipal life.
Put your name on the count.
H.R. 51 has passed the House twice and never received a Senate floor vote. Today 199 representatives and 43 senators cosponsor it (League of Women Voters DC).
The petition isn't symbolic. Every signature is a constituent on the public record — and that record makes the next opening possible.