The Right to Vote for President

Residents of Washington, D.C., got the right to vote for the nation’s highest office just 55 years ago

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Washington, D.C., didn’t get the right to participate in presidential elections until March 29, 1961.

Washington, D.C., has served as the seat of U.S. government for nearly as long as the nation has existed. But residents of the District of Columbia didn’t get the right to participate in presidential elections until March 29, 1961. That is when the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution was ratified.

The 23rd Amendment declared that D.C. would receive electoral-college votes for president and vice president. Today, D.C. gets three electors.

Congress passed the proposal in the summer of 1960. It seemed like a no-brainer to many. In fact, the amendment would go on to become the second most quickly ratified in constitutional history. (The fastest was the 12th Amendment, which lays out the procedure for electing the president and vice president.) Still, it was no sure thing.

The 23rd Amendment was presented to the nation amid the turmoil of the early-1960s civil rights movement. Black and white Americans were separated, or segregated, in many aspects of daily life. But lawmakers could see that segregation would no longer stand. The court case Brown v. Board of Education had ended the separation of black and white students in public schools in 1954. But equality would not become the law until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The population of the District of Columbia was majority African-American. By adding electors from D.C., Congress would likely push the national needle toward civil rights. Not everyone was happy about that.

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A license plate from 2013 uses the famous slogan of the American Revolution to protest the District of Columbia’s continued exclusion from representation in Congress.

Even though the amendment had overwhelming support on a national level, its ratification votes divided along geographic lines. No states in the Deep South ratified it. Arkansas outright rejected the proposal. According to aWashington Post article written at the time, a state representative, Marion Crank, led the state’s fight against ratification. Crank told the House: “They propose to create another state. Giving them electors is the first step.”

Even without the support of Arkansas and several other states, the 23rd Amendment was ratified. However, the capital is still not represented in Congress. A 1978 constitutional amendment that would have given D.C. a vote in Congress was never ratified.

Here is what TIME had to say about the 23rd amendment in 1961:

“Thanks to a succession of oversights by the Founding Fathers and early Congresses, the residents of the District of Columbia have never enjoyed one particular constitutional right cherished by all other Americans: the privilege of voting. There was no reasoning attending the oversights; it was just plain neglect. Last week Rhode Island cast the 36th affirmative vote for the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution, giving 746,000 Washingtonians the right to vote in presidential elections—and three electoral votes. Ohio and Kansas are expected to ratify the amendment this week, making the necessary two-thirds majority for official adoption (only one legislature—Arkansas—rejected the amendment outright, on the grounds that 54% of the District’s citizens are [black]).

“But after 161 years, Washingtonians will be limited to voting for the president and vice president. They will continue to have no representative in Congress, no voice in their municipal government.”

Why is it important for people to vote in elections?