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What If Washington DC Was Made Into A Full State? The Douglass Commonwealth
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Mar 31, 2025
Within the United State's capital lives 700,000 people who have no representation in the legislative bodies that tax and govern their lives. Washington DC residents are not a part of any state and therefor do not have a representative in the House of Representative, nor a senator in the Senate. For this reason, Washington DC contradicts the timeless American saying of "No Taxation Without Representation." Today, there are currently efforts to give Washington DC statehood. So what would it look like if that did happen?
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No taxation without representation is one of the most basic core concepts of the United States
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It's not too far off to say that this one idea is what led to the founding of the country we know
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today. Despite this, the United States does currently tax a portion of its citizens who
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have no representation in Congress, and these people live in the very capital of the United
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States. So what if Washington, D.C. was given full statehood? Hello and welcome to What If Geography, where we try and answer the great geographic what-if
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questions of the world. I'm your host Jeff Gibson, and today we're going to talk about
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Washington DC, the capital and seat of power of the United States. But while Washington DC might
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be where the president lives, it actually doesn't have any representation at all within Congress
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and there's a historic reason for that. Unlike most major cities on the East Coast, Washington DC did not exist prior to the
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Revolutionary War. Instead, it was planned and built well after the U.S. secured its independence
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from England. On July 9, 1790, Congress passed the Residence Act, which approved the creation of a
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national capital on the Potomac River. The exact location was chosen by then-President George
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Washington and formed from land donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia. The initial shape
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of the federal district was a square measuring 10 miles on each side, totaling 100 square miles
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Then, in 1801, Congress passed the District of Columbia Organic Act, which officially recognized the Capitol and placed the entire territory under the exclusive control of the federal government
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This federal territory was organized into two counties, the County of Washington to the east of the Potomac River and the County of Alexandria to the west
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After the passage of this act, citizens living in the district were no longer considered residents of Maryland or Virginia
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which officially ended their representation in Congress. So only 33 years after the first publication mentioning
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No Taxation Without Representation, the new U.S. government stripped representation away from those living in its brand new capital city
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Granted, in 1801, there was only around 8,000 people living there, but this grew rapidly over the next few decades
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By 1870, Washington, D.C. was home to over 130,000 people, many of whom were recently freed slaves
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following the conclusion of the American Civil War. Speaking of the Civil War, the reason why today's Washington, D.C
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does not include its southwestern half is because that portion of the capital retroceded
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back to Virginia in 1846. This had nothing to do with representation, however
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Instead at the time Alexandria had a major slave trading market and sensing change coming residents petitioned the state of Virginia to allow for the entire area west of the Potomac to be reabsorbed thus restoring their representative rights and ensuring slavery would exist for a few more added years Today Washington D has no representation in either the United States House of Representatives
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or the U.S. Senate. The district does elect a non-voting delegate to the U.S. House of
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Representatives, but the position has very few official duties. All this despite D.C. residents
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and businesses paying more than $20 billion annually in federal taxes, higher than the
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federal taxes collected from 19 states and the highest federal taxes per capita. For 221 years
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citizens of the United States who have made their homes within the capital of the country have not had any representation in the laws that govern and tax them
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But just because this has been the case in the past does not mean that needs to be its future
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But before we get into what Washington DC would look like as its own fully-fledged state
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if you're enjoying this video, now would be a great time to subscribe. More fun geography videos are just one click away
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Today's Washington, D.C. exists only on the Maryland side of the Potomac River and takes up about 68 square miles
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If Washington, D.C. were made into its own state, it would be by far the smallest state in the country
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The current smallest state in the country is Rhode Island, which is almost 22 times larger at around 1,500 square miles
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But while this is a frequent criticism of Washington, D.C. statehood proposals, there aren't actually any size requirements to being a state
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It would be far more fair to compare the potential state of D.C. to other like population states
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and, in this case, D.C. would not be the smallest in the country
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Washington, D.C. is currently larger than both Wyoming and Vermont in terms of population
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and will likely outgrow the state of Alaska in the next few years. It's also worth noting that Nevada was entered into the Union as a full-fledged state in 1867
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with a population of just 6,857 people. The only requirement around size with respect to Washington, D.C.'s statehood is that there needs to remain a federal district that's not owned by any one state
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But that's a relatively simple fix. The federal area can simply shrink down to the unpopulated areas that comprise the Capitol building, White House, Mall, and other federal monuments
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There's no need for the federal district to encompass 700,000 people's homes
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No matter how you slice it, the fact remains that about 700,000 people living within the contiguous United States has no electoral representation
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But if they were made into a state, how would that change the current political landscape
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If Washington D were made into a full state two things would immediately occur within Congress The first is that Washington D would get an actual representative to vote on issues within the House of Representatives Now due to its relatively small size in terms of population Washington D would only get a single representative
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Currently, the U.S. Census tries to apportion to an average about 760,000 people per elected
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member. But every state gets at least one. And because the current House of Representatives is
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capped at 435 elected members, Washington, D.C.'s representative would have to come at the expense
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of another state. In 2020, the following states lost a representative due to the apportionment
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process. California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. So it's unlikely Washington DC's representative would come from any of these states
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Instead, Washington DC would likely gain its representative from either Wisconsin or Indiana, as both states are currently well under the average population per elected member
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and both states have shown relatively anemic growth over the last decade
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The next thing that would happen is that Washington, D.C. would immediately get two senators for the upper chamber of Congress
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This would likely have the biggest impact on the current Congress we see today
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You see, at present, the Senate is currently split 50-50 between Democratic senators and Republican senators
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Washington, D.C. senators would almost certainly be Democratic. This would give the Democrats a solid majority in the upper chamber of Congress for at least the next few months
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In some ways, this would help right the ship in the Senate a bit. Currently, Democrats control 50 Senate seats
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but represent 41 million more people than their Republican counterparts. This imbalance is because Republicans typically control smaller states
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So, for example, Wyoming gets two senators for its 576,000 people, and California gets two senators for its 39 million people
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But while it would certainly make the Senate far more fair, you can also see where the potential problem lies
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with getting agreement on D.C. becoming a state. Residents of Washington, D.C. are well aware of their predicament
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Every election, they are reminded that, because of where they live, they don't get the full rights to representation that their neighbors do
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Though it's probably not surprising to find out that there's been efforts dating back a century to provide this kind of representation to Washington, D.C
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Most recently, in 2020, legislation was passed in the House of Representatives
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on making Washington, D.C. a state. However, the bill was then stalled by the Republican-controlled Senate, where then-Senate
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Majority Leader Mitch McConnell simply refused to bring it up for a vote
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To this day, the upper chamber of the United States Congress has never voted one way or
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another on Washington D statehood Today the Democrats currently control both the House of Representatives and the Senate but by a razor margin and with at least two conservative Democratic senators who are not all that interested in voting yes on D statehood
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So even if the Democrat-controlled Senate would allow a vote on it, there's no guarantee that it would pass
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That said, Senator Tom Carper of Delaware has introduced Senate Bill 51
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which would vote on granting Washington D.C. statehood. But while the bill currently has 45 co-sponsors
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all of which are Democratic or independent, there's been no movement to bring it to an actual vote
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If the Democrats are serious about D.C. statehood, they likely only have a few more months to even vote on it with a majority in both chambers
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After the 2022 midterm elections, there's a considerable chance that the Republicans control one or both chambers of Congress
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A common criticism of the Washington D.C. statehood movement is that there's really no need for it to be its own state at all
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Recall that the west side of Washington, D.C. retroceded back to Virginia in the mid-1800s
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A similar process could be done for the eastern side to Maryland. This would give residents of Washington, D.C
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voting representation in the House of Representatives and they would have the two senators
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currently allotted to Maryland as their representative in the upper chamber. However, in the 2016 referendum on the issue
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D.C. residents overwhelmingly voted that idea down with 86% of residents voting in favor of D.C. statehood
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And under the admissions clause of the U.S. Constitution, Essentially, this referendum acts as a legally binding vote on retrocession and D.C. statehood
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Unless another referendum is voted on, the only path forward for Washington, D.C. residents to get representation today
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is by becoming the 51st state. Within the capital of our United States
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lies 700,000 people with no representation in the laws and taxes that govern them
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But they're not the only ones who are dealing with this exact same issue. Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa
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the US Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariano Islands all have the same problem
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All told, these places make up about three and a half additional American citizens
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who have zero representation in Congress. But those territories will have to wait
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for another video on another day. I hope you enjoyed learning about what Washington DC
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might look like as its own state. If you did, please subscribe to my channel
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And if you wanna watch more of my videos, you can do so here. Thanks for watching, see you next time
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