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From: William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: (ReacTor) Five SF Scenarios Involving the US Presidential Line of
 Succession
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2024 11:05:41 -0400
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Chris Buckley wrote:
> On 2024-10-14, William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Chris Buckley wrote:
>>> On 2024-10-11, William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Dimensional Traveler wrote:
>>>>> On 10/10/2024 9:28 AM, William Hyde wrote:
>>>>>> Paul S Person wrote:
>>>>>>> I also suspect a new District of Columbia will be established,
>>>>>>> probably in the middle of the country. Nothing like high mountains and
>>>>>>> a thousand miles or two of land to make a government feel secure.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Without, one hopes, disenfranchising a million Americans.
>>>>>>
>>>>> You can't be disenfranchised if you don't have the ability to vote in
>>>>> the first place.  ;)
>>>>
>>>> As I understand it a number of people in Georgetown and other
>>>> settlements in what became DC were rather unhappy with their loss of
>>>> voting rights.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> When I lived in DC someone published a few letters from the time as part
>>>> of the movement to enfranchise the residents of DC.
>>>
>>> The issue in DC has not been about being able to vote for a long time.
>>
>> It certainly was when I lived there.
>>
>>> Republicans have been floating plans to enfranchise DC residents for
>>> decades,
>>
>> Only plans that will never come to fruition.
>>
>>
>>
>>    but the local Democrats have been saying "no, we don't want
>>> to vote that much."  The Republican plans are to join DC and Maryland
>>> in some form, perhaps making the remaining DC part of Maryland
>>
>> Maryland doesn't want them.  That's what makes the plan so perfect for
>> the Republicans. It won't happen but they can say that they are doing
>> something.
> 
> Baloney!

Reality.

Look it up.  It's not popular in Maryland.
> 
> First, both DC and Maryland are heavily Democratic; 

Quite irrelevant.  The voters of Maryland do not want to share their 
senators with the people of DC.

If we come to the point where Maryland accepts the deal, but DC does 
not, then there's an end of it as far as I am concerned.  But as the 
people of DC have been without legislative representation for over 200 
years, I don't think they should be required to wait until MD changes 
it's mind.

There's no reason DC has to be a state.  It's just that making it a 
state or joining it with MD would not require a constitutional amendment.

But it would be easy to formulate, if not pass, another solution.  The 
district will have voting house members in proportion to its population 
(one at the moment and probably forever) and one senator.

Nothing would change in the US except that the people of DC would have 
some voting power, albeit less than the people of Vermont or Wyoming, 
both with smaller populations.  But then the senate is inherently 
undemocratic anyway.  Not nearly as undemocratic as ours, but 
undemocratic all the same.

William Hyde