If District residents value the opportunity they have to vote once every two, four or six years, they’ll simply have to move to a real state. That they don’t move suggests that they value the vote less than the far greater influence they have over national affairs, compared to more remote citizens, simply by virtue of their daily proximity to the organs and levers of national power. Perhaps that’s one reason people continue to move to Washington, despite losing the vote in the process.

Roger Pilon is vice president for legal affairs at the Cato Institute and the inaugural holder of Cato’s B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies. He is the founding director of Cato’s Center for Constitutional Studies and the founding publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review.

Image: Flickr/Ted Eytan.