What advantage would there be in making DC a state?

For whom? The people who live there, or everyone else?

If Washington, DC, became a state, the US flag would need to be modified. It would impact the voting process on a variety of levels.

I’ve only lived just outside of DC, even while working in the city. This is just a guess, but it could change the cost of living within this new state. It would be interesting to find out who influences that.

It would mean more Democrats in congress. So that’s either an advantage or disadvantage depending on your POV.

Flip the question – what serious rationale is there for depriving 700,000 of their representatives in Congress, and disallowing their own self-governance?

Wyoming has 100,000 fewer people and they are a state. Vermont is smaller, too. Alaska and North Dakota are just a little larger than DC.

@elbanditoroso Couldn’t DC just be reabsorbed into Maryland then? That’s what happened to DC’s other half (in the 1840s, it was reabsorbed into Virginia and is now Arlington County and Alexandria).

Theoretically yes, @Demosthenes although that’s not what has been talked about for the last 60 years.

I think it gets tricky because a portion of the DC is considered “federal ground” while most of the area (DC is approx. 69 square miles in area) is business and residential. I’m not sure how to draw those lines.

And the Constitution mandates (Article 1 section 8) that DC is it’s own district, so Maryland couldn’t get it back without a constitutional amendment, which isn’t going to happen.

@Demosthenes Virginia took back half of the DC area because it was afraid that abolitionists would end the slave trade in DC and they wanted to protect it in Virginia.

DC only has a delegate in the House of Representative who does not have a vote. No senators. If you make it a state it would have at least 1 rep in the house and of course 2 senators. There has been talk of DC becoming part of Maryland, but DC doesn’t seem to want that. Some info here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_voting_rights

DC does get to vote for President, unlike the US territories.

They could change DC to have a house vote. I think that could pass actually. How can the people not be represented? It’s illogical.

I don’t know how Maryland feels about absorbing DC. I’m from Maryland, but I don’t remember any conversation about Maryland’s thoughts on the matter. It would add to the Maryland SNAP burden and other social services I think. That could be worked out though. Not sure what other negatives Maryland might cite. Another Jelly mentioned having to add a star to the flag, I remember people talking about that when Puerto Rico was voting fir statehood years ago, but then PR voted it down so we didn’t have to worry about the flag.

DC is directly linked to the size of the federal government. Their economy is almost totally supported by the government. No other state has that kind of bias and that is why it was set up as a district rather than a state. DC will always vote for larger government because that’s what drives it’s economy and that why democrats want to make it a state. there are Constitutional issues in making DC a state since it is defined as a district in the Constitution, which is another reason the democrats want to pack the court. I have no idea how any of this will turn-out but it has nothing to do with representation and everything to do with political power.

Does DC offer some sort of special protection for politicians?

Only the protection of numbers.