March 29, 1961: The 23rd Amendment Is Ratified

The Flag of the District of Columbia

March 29, 1961: The 23rd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is ratified. It permits the District of Columbia, contiguous with the City of Washington, the nation's capital city, to have the number of Electoral Votes to which it "would be entitled if it were a State."

In other words, D.C. wouldn't be a State, and it wouldn't have voting representatives in either the U.S. House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate; but it would have the Electoral Votes for President that it would have it if it were a State. In other words, 3: 1 for the member of the House that it would have, and 2 for the members of the Senate that it would have.

The necessary 38 States turned out to be nearly every State outside the South. Aside from Arkansas, Tennessee and Oklahoma, no Southern State even held a vote on it -- and Arkansas, less than 4 years after the Little Rock integration crisis, was the only one to reject it.

In the short term: This raises the total number of Electoral Votes from 535 to 538, and thus the number needed to be elected President, a majority, from 269 to 270, which ts remains today. In the long term: With D.C. having a majority-black population, and the Republican Party having, ever since, gone out of its way to disrespect the voting rights of black people, it has guaranteed that the Democratic nominee for President will always have the District's 3 Electoral Votes:

1964: 85.5 percent for Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater

1968: 81.8 for Hubert Humphrey over Richard Nixon

1972: 78.1 for George McGovern over Nixon

1976: 81.6 for Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford

1980: 74.9 for Carter over Ronald Reagan

1984: 85.4 for Walter Mondale over Reagan

1988: 82.6 for Michael Dukakis over George H.W. Bush

1992: 84.6 for Bill Clinton over Bush

1996: 85.2 for Clinton over Bob Dole

2000: 85.1 for Al Gore over George W. Bush

2004: 89.2 for John Kerry over Bush

2008: 92.4 for Barack Obama over John McCain

2012: 90.9 for Obama over Mitt Romney

2016: 90.8 for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump

2020: 92.1 for Joe Biden over Trump

In 1972, McGovern won only D.C. and 1 State, Massachusetts. In 1984, Mondale won D.C. and 1 State, his home State of Minnesota, by a mere 3,761 votes.

Residents of D.C. want Statehood. But the fact that the 23rd Amendment specifically states that D.C. is not a State means that, most likely, a new Amendment, repealing this one, will be necessary to make D.C. a State. And since it would almost certainly mean 2 new black, therefore liberal and Democratic, members of the U.S. Senate, the Republican Party would never allow it.

In 2009, Senator Orrin Hatch suggested an idea: Giving D.C. a House seat, and adding another House seat for the fastest-growing State in the country at the time, which happened to be Hatch's home State of Utah. This way, with the House growing from 435 to 437 seats, each major Party would get 1 more new seat, without any State having to lose any. Others have suggested simply giving the District back to Maryland, the State from which it was originally carved out, letting Maryland have an extra House seat to cover D.C., and letting D.C. have Maryland's Senators. Both of these ideas went nowhere.

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March 29, 1961 was a Wednesday. Actress Amy Sedaris was born on this day.

Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. The Stanley Cup Playoffs were underway, but no games were scheduled for this day.

There was 1 game played in the NBA Playoffs: The St. Louis Hawks beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 114-113 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. Bob Pettit scored 31 points for the Hawks, while Elgin Baylor scored 39 in defeat for the Lakers.