A political scientist discussed the history and legacy of D.C.’s nonvoting delegate to Congress in a virtual lecture Monday.

Elliot Mamet, a postdoctoral research associate and lecturer at Princeton University, explored the ways D.C.’s delegates have navigated and advanced the city’s fight for autonomy from the federal government, despite being democratically unequal to their other elected counterparts. The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum hosted the event as part of its ongoing series of lectures about D.C. history and culture titled “D.C. Mondays.”

D.C. elected its first nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives in 1971 under the 1970 District of Columbia Delegate Act, which created the position to give the District representation in Congress without full voting rights. The law came a decade after the country ratified the 23rd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted the District three electoral votes in presidential elections.

The nonvoting delegate can sit on, cast votes in and chair congressional committees as well as introduce legislation in the House but cannot vote on legislation’s final passage.

“My claim is that the history of the D.C. delegate must be understood with the history of D.C.’s democratic status and fights over representation and suffrage and race in the District of Columbia,” Mamet said.

Mamet said because Article I of the U.S. Constitution requires that only states can be represented in Congress, D.C.’s more than 700,000 residents are effectively “disenfranchised citizens,” who still pay federal taxes but are not entitled to voting rights in Congress.

He said D.C.’s nonvoting delegate is “markedly inferior” to members hailing from states because they lack the ability to vote on most parliamentary procedures in the House, like choosing a Speaker. Mamet said the ability of nonvoting delegates to vote for Speaker could have proven decisive in 2023, when Republican infighting over who to elect stalled proceedings but left the Democratic nominee short of the finish line.

He said the idea of D.C. not having a vote in Congress creates contradictions, like how D.C.’s residents can vote for a president through the 23rd Amendment, but the District’s delegate cannot vote to remove a president in impeachment proceedings.

“In short, their position is as a second-class lawmaker charged to represent without a vote,” Mamet said.

Mamet said since 1971, only two people have served as D.C.’s delegate, Walter Fauntroy — who served from 1971 to 1991 — and Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s current delegate who won election in 1990 to succeed Fauntroy. He said although both Democrats served in a voteless role, they both “acted creatively” to represent their constituents in Congress by exercising their power through committee seniority and negotiations with allied members of Congress.

Mamet said one of Norton’s biggest accomplishments in Congress was negotiating in 1993 the ability for D.C.’s delegate to vote in the “committee of the whole,” a procedure where all House members act as one large committee to debate bills and vote on amendments before a final vote for passage. He said Norton and other nonvoting delegates have the ability to vote on amendments to legislation, with the caveat that their votes do not count if they prove decisive.

“How important was this arcane procedural drama to D.C. democratic representation in Congress? Well, for Norton, she’s quoted as saying that this is the most important change since home rule was granted 20 years ago. She viewed it as crucial,” Mamet said.

He added that Norton and Fauntroy have introduced a combined thousands of bills and were the main authors behind at least 54 bills that became law.

“Next time someone says to you ‘The delegates, they are just symbolic lobbyists, they don’t have power in Congress,’ you can say, ‘Well, Fauntroy and Norton at least exercised ingenuity to gain power and affect real change for the residents of the District of Columbia,’” Mamet said.

Mamet said the “high-water mark” of D.C.’s empowerment — gaining electoral votes in 1961 and a delegate to Congress a decade later — was the passage of the D.C. Home Rule Act in 1973, granting the District’s residents the ability to elect a mayor and city council to administrate local business. He said the Home Rule Act was the “last major legislation” of the Civil Rights Era because it finally granted a form of local autonomy to the District’s majority-Black population.

Mamet said since the Home Rule Act’s passage, D.C. has faced significant pushback on its authority to self govern but that having the nonvoting delegate position has helped the city avoid more significant encroachment on its power. He said Norton helped negotiate the creation of the D.C. Financial Control Board in 1995, a federal body that oversaw the District’s finances until 2001 after the city failed to pass a balanced budget several years in a row, avoiding a more sweeping federal takeover of D.C.’s government.

Mamet said despite D.C.’s delegates successfully maintaining local autonomy since 1973, he thinks home rule has never been “under attack” as much as it is today by President Donald Trump’s administration and a Republican-controlled Congress. He said in recent years, Congress has nullified local laws, like a controversial bill overhauling D.C.’s criminal code, cut $1 billion of locally raised tax revenue and, since August, the federal government has been “occupying” the city with federal troops.

“At the moment, I think really it’s kind of all hands on deck to defend home rule at a really precarious moment for the city,” Mamet said.