The best solution would be a congressional act, not an amendment,
ceding jurisdiction of the residents of DC back to Maryland, where they
would be able to vote for both members of congress, and for other
Maryland officials, both statewide and for members of the Maryland
legislature. Since the average size of a congressional district is now
710,000, and the population of DC is 601,000, one or more congressional
districts would have to be drawn by the Maryland Legislature, either
putting DC in one, or dividing it among more than one, congressional
district.
A constitutional amendment would not be needed, because DC was created
by an act of Congress under Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 17, together with a
cession of the territory by the Maryland Legislature. A repeal of that
act would be sufficient to reverse the cession, and there is precedent
for a partial reverse cession of parts of it, or only the residents of
it. No consent by Maryland is needed.
This would not bear on other territories, which are held either under
Art. IV Sec. 3 Cl. 3, or under treaties. They are not cessions from
states under Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 17.
The same kind of reverse cession could be done for any other federal
enclave. There is no requirement that an act for one enclave must be
applied to others, or to all. However, it could be. It appears that the
residents of many other federal enclaves already vote in state
elections. See Jurisdiction
over Federal Areas within the States, and for the PDF with images,
see http://constitution.org/juris/fjur/fedjurisreport.pdf
and http://constitution.org/juris/fjur/jurisreportlast.pdf
.
For those who might want to amend the Constitution, here is one
candidate:
Ceded parcels
Parcels ceded to the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress by consent
of a state legislature must be specifically described by metes and
bounds at the time of cession, and all state citizens of such parcel
shall remain citizens of the ceding state for all elections to offices
of the state or the Union. The boundaries of such parcels shall be
clearly marked to give notice to any person entering or leaving which
jurisdiction he or she is in.
Most of the other proposals suffer from serious flaws, which have been
discussed.
On 12/23/2010 01:07 AM, Scarberry, Mark wrote:
What do list members think?
On list comments (on either list) would be great.
-- Jon
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