Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution

Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution

1961 amendment granting presidential electors to the District of Columbia

The Twenty-third Amendment ( Amendment XXIII) to the United States Constitution extends the right to participate in presidential elections to the District of Columbia. The amendment grants to the district electors in the Electoral College, as though it were a state, though the district can never have more electors than the least-populous state. How the electors are appointed is to be determined by Congress. The Twenty-third Amendment was proposed by the 86th Congress on June 16, 1960; it was ratified by the requisite number of states on March 29, 1961.

The Constitution provides that each state receives presidential electors equal to the combined number of seats it has in the Senate and the House of Representatives. As the District of Columbia is not a state, it was not entitled to any electors before the adoption of the Twenty-third Amendment. As early as 1888, some journalists and members of Congress favored a constitutional amendment to grant the district electoral votes. Still, such an amendment did not win widespread support until the rise of the civil rights movement in the 1950s. The amendment was not seen as a partisan measure; ratification of the amendment was endorsed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and both major party candidates in the 1960 presidential election. The amendment's ratification made the district the only entity other than the states to have any representation in the Electoral College.

The first presidential election in which the District of Columbia participated was the election of 1964. Starting with that election, the District of Columbia has consistently had three members in the Electoral College, this being the constitutionally implied minimum number it is entitled to; notwithstanding the constitutionally entrenched limitation on its number of electors, the District's population has never reached the threshold where it otherwise would have been entitled to more than three. Since the passage of the Twenty-third Amendment, all but one of the district's electoral votes have been cast for the Democratic Party's presidential candidates.[1][ bettersourceneeded] The Twenty-third Amendment did not grant the district voting rights in Congress, nor did it give the district the right to participate in the process that allows the Constitution to be amended. A constitutional amendment to do this was proposed by Congress in 1978, but not enough states ratified it for it to be adopted. Many citizens of the district favor statehood or further constitutional amendments to address these issues.

Ratification by the states

Ratified amendment, 1960–61

Ratified amendment after its certification

Rejected amendment

No action taken on amendment

To become valid as part of the Constitution, the Twenty-third Amendment needed to be ratified by the legislatures of three-quarters of the states (38, following the admission of Alaska and Hawaii to the union in 1959) within seven years from its submission to the states by Congress (June 16, 1967). President Eisenhower, along with both major party candidates in the 1960 presidential election, Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts, endorsed the proposal. Amendment supporters ran an effective ratification campaign, mobilizing persons in almost every state to press for its approval.[7]

The following states ratified the amendment:[11]

1. Hawaii – June 23, 1960
2. Massachusetts – August 22, 1960
3. New Jersey – December 19, 1960
4. New York – January 17, 1961
5. California – January 19, 1961
6. Oregon – January 27, 1961
7. Maryland – January 30, 1961
8. Idaho – January 31, 1961
9. Maine – January 31, 1961
10. Minnesota – January 31, 1961
11. New Mexico – February 1, 1961
12. Nevada – February 2, 1961
13. Montana – February 6, 1961
14. Colorado – February 8, 1961
15. Washington – February 9, 1961
16. West Virginia – February 9, 1961
17. Alaska – February 10, 1961
18. Wyoming – February 13, 1961
19. South Dakota – February 14, 1961 (date of filing in Office of Secretary of State of South Dakota)
20. Delaware – February 20, 1961
21. Utah – February 21, 1961
22. Wisconsin – February 21, 1961
23. Pennsylvania – February 28, 1961
24. Indiana – March 3, 1961
25. North Dakota – March 3, 1961
26. Tennessee – March 6, 1961
27. Michigan – March 8, 1961
28. Connecticut – March 9, 1961
29. Arizona – March 10, 1961
30. Illinois – March 14, 1961
31. Nebraska – March 15, 1961
32. Vermont – March 15, 1961
33. Iowa – March 16, 1961
34. Missouri – March 20, 1961
35. Oklahoma – March 21, 1961
36. Rhode Island – March 22, 1961
37. Kansas – March 29, 1961
38. Ohio – March 29, 1961

Ratification was completed on March 29, 1961, 9 months and 12 days after being proposed by Congress. The following states subsequently ratified the amendment:

39. New Hampshire – March 30, 1961 (Date in the official notice; preceded by ratification on March 29, 1961, as the 37th state to ratify, which was annulled and then repeated later that same day.)40. Alabama – April 11, 2002

On April 3, 1961, John L. Moore, Administrator of General Services, certified that the amendment had been adopted by the requisite number of States and had become a part of the Constitution.

The amendment was rejected by Arkansas on January 24, 1961.[12] Nine states took no action on the amendment: Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, North Carolina, and Virginia.