We must not engage in a worldwide campaign for human rights while, at the same time, deny the most basic democratic right to the residents of our Nation's Capital. Our campaign to encourage universal concern for human rights will have a hollow ring if we are not prepared to improve our own performance at home.

Mr. Chairman, it is interesting to note today on the radio the Government of South Africa has decided to have all white elections. They talk as if they say they're going to get a mandate from the people; they're going to get a mandate from the select few. And it seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that we in Congress have spoken with both tongues on this subject long enough. When I hear of a Rhodesian or a South African voting system, I am horribly reminded of a House of Representatives of the greatest democracy in the world that denies three-quarters of 1 million people the right to vote.

The President is, evidently, through the Vice President, going to support this legislation, which will be very necessary.

Because of our belief in basic democratic principles and our embarkment on a worldwide human rights campaign, we have an increased responsibility to insure that the rights of the poor and minority populations in this country are protected. The fact that we have disenfranchised some of our citizens is a violation of human rights here in our own backyard. This disgraceful and embarrassing situation must be remedied and Congress should not avoid this responsibility any longer.

I thank the chairman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Stewart B. McKinney follows:]

STATEMENT OF HON. STEWART B. MCKINNEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, it is a pleasure to appear before you today to express my views on the subject of Full Voting Representation for the District of Columbia. I am here to share with you this morning my concern in this continuing Congressional debate over the suffrage rights of 750,000 District residents, Citizens of these United States. As you know, I have long been a supporter of full voting represenation for the District of Columbia.

More than 200 years after a revolution was fought to end "taxation without representation" District residents are still denied this basic right enjoyed by all other American citizens.

Since 1800, when District Residents last voted for members of Congress, there have been more than 150 attempts to regain suffrage. Today, those who support Full Voting Representation include not only citizens of the District, but American citizens across the country, a large number of my colleagues in Congress, and both the Democratic and Republican Parties in their respective 1976 platforms. Reportedly, in 1971, the League of Women Voters of the United States conducted a nation-wide petition drive in support of an amendment for full voting representation and in a one week period secured one and one-quarter million signatures. I join that support.

If our advocacy of Human Rights is to be regarded as credible and not counterfeit, the citizens of the Nation's capital have a right to be fully enfranchised in the national legislature. Presently, we have an elected delegate to the House of Representatives who is not entitled to vote except in committee. A voice without a vote is not representation. Even voting representation in the House alone, while a partial step, would not be representation in the American tradition of Democracy. Residents of the District of Columbia will continue to be less than first class citizens if they have no vote in the Senate.

Fundamental to our concept of American Democracy is that none of the obligations of citizenship be imposed upon citizens without "the consent of the gov

erned" through their representatives in both chambers of Congress-the House and Senate. But the facts reveal that to reside in our Capital City as an American citizen is to have all the obligations of citizenship without the corresponding vote in the House or Senate to register their consent or dissent in the deliberations of their National Government. District residents have fought and died in every American war since the District was founded. Surely those who choose to reside in the District, do not do so in an attempt to avoid the obligations of American citizenship. Equity, alone, would mandate that District citizens be accorded the full rights of citizenship, including the right to suffrage.

The proposed amendment simply provides the people of the District with the right to vote in Congress and thereby meaningfully participate in the controversial debates which so vitally affect their lives. A non-voting delegate is not the answer. It is the power of the vote in both Congressional chambers that is needed to guarantee full representation of the citizens of Washington, D.C.

Surely our Constitution can be amended in such a fashion as to resolve the political plight of the citizens of our Nation's Capital granting them the right to elect two Senators and the number of Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a state.

Nowhere does our Constitution forbid the Grant of full representation to the citizens of the Capital. Furthermore, there is simply no justification for denying three-quarters of a million people, paying more than $1 billion in Federal taxes per year, a vote in deciding how that money is allocated.

I urge my colleagues in the House to use our Constitution in this grave instance, as a shield and not a sword in protecting a Constitutional right of all American citizens.

We must not engage in a worldwide campaign for Human Rights while at the same time deny the most basic democratic right to the residents of our Nation's capital. Our campaign to encourage universal concern for Human Rights will have a hollow ring if we are not prepared to improve our own performance at home.

I believe that Presidential support is a necessary factor in gaining passage of this legislation in the Congress and I welcome his recent support.

Because of our belief in basic democratic principles and our embarkment on a worldwide Human Rights campaign, we have an increased responsibility to insure that the rights of the poor and minority populations in this country are protected. The fact that we have disenfranchised some of our citizens is a violation of Human Rights right here in our own backyard. This disgraceful and embarrassing situation must be remedied and Congress should not avoid this responsibility.

Thank you.

Mr. EDWARDS. We thank you very much, Mr. McKinney, or a very eloquent statement. We thank you for your support in the past and for what you are going to do for this important issues in the months to

come.

The gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Drinan.

Mr. DRINAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. McKinney, I want to echo those sentiments. Ever since you came to Congress with me in 1971 you have been in the forefront of this fight. I stand in your admiration, and hope that this time it's going to work. I remember very well the support that you mustered for us when we took the measure to the floor and almost made the twothirds. I hope we will have a rerun of that and this time we're going to make it.

I commend you on the eloquence of your statement and welcome you back to the Congress. I trust that your help is going to be more vigorous than ever before, and that with your assistance this time we shall prevail.

I thank you very much.

Mr. MCKINNEY. I thank the gentleman very much, and you may rest assured on this particular subject my vigor will not diminish by 1 inch.

Mr. EDWARDS. Thank you very much.

The other witnesses scheduled for today have most graciously agreed to take questions from subcommittee members and counsel as a panel. Our first panel of distinguished witnesses come as spokespersons for national and local constituencies: Sterling Tucker, Chairman of the City Council of the District of Columbia and president of the Metropolitan Coalition of Self-Determination for the District of Columbia, is an outstanding spokesperson for voters of the Nation's Capital; Ruth C. Clusen has recently begun her second 2-year term as president of the League of Women Voters of the United States, Mrs. Clusen is an eloquent spokesperson for human rights in this country and abroad; and Clarence Arata, executive vice president of the Metropolitan Board of Trade, comes to us representing more than 1,400 retailers and business and community leaders in the District of Columbia.

All three of you may come up and sit down. We are delighted to have you here.

And, Mr. Tucker, if you would, please, lead off.

TESTIMONY OF STERLING TUCKER, CHAIRMAN, CITY COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, AND PRESIDENT, SELFDETERMINATION FOR DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA-METROPOLITAN COALITION; ACCOMPANIED BY RUTH C. CLUSEN, PRESIDENT, THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF THE UNITED STATES; AND CLARENCE ARATA, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON BOARD OF TRADE

Mr. TUCKER. All right.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. We are, indeed, pleased to be here, and we want to congratulate you for your leadership in this effort and for the

We are happy about the announcement, you have just shared with us, and we hope that this will inspire us all anew in continuing this great cause.

I do have a brief statement that I would like to read into the record, Mr. Chairman, and my colleagues here, I'm sure, will want to do the same, and then we'll be very happy to respond to questions.

Mr. EDWARDS. All right.

Mr. TUCKER. These hearings mark yet another occasion on which the House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights had considered legislation to extend full citizenship to the residents of the District of Columbia. No fewer than 17 resolutions on voting representation in Congress for the District of Columbia have been introduced in the 94th and 95th Congress. And yet more than 200 years since our Nation's founding, some three-quarters of a million Americans are still denied one of the rights fundamental to our democracy, the right of meaningful participation in the political process through elected, voting representatives in our national legislature, the U.S. Congress. As chairman of the City Council of the District of Columbia, I can personally attest that these disenfranchised 720,000 District of Columbia residents, discharge all duties asked of other American citizens. The District of Columbia has a higher per capita income$5,657 in 1974 than any State in the country. Therefore, its residents

contribute substantially to the Federal revenues-very nearly the highest per contribution in the country. Is it consistent with democratic principle that we have no part in deciding how that money is spent? Our forebears found taxation without representation so abhorrent that they waged a war to end that abomination, or so they thought. Distinguished subcommittee members, I hope you share my belief that those statesmen would strongly disapprove the disenfranchisement of 720,000 Americans who live in the District of Columbia. They would never have asserted that taxation without representation is tyranny and then added the footnote, "except in the District of Columbia."

Indeed, our Revolutionary War, as well as other wars in which we have felt forced to intervene, serves as a painful reminder that men and women are willing to die to safeguard the Democratic principles to which we all subscribe. War is, unfortunately, a subject that has figured significantly in the preservation of our democracy. The residents of the District of Columbia have not shirked this important responsibility of citizenship. In this century alone, 1,621 residents have died fighting in our Nation's wars; 1,621 Americans were considered full-fledged citizens for purposes of fighting, yet were not granted that status for purposes of voting for congressional representatives. I do not believe that this inconsistency was the intent of the framers of the Constitution when they inadvertently disenfranchised District of Columbia residents.

It is argued by some detractors of full congressional representation for the District of Columbia that if its residents feel so strongly about their right to elect voting representatives they should live elsewhere. I ask you, distinguished committee members, should American citizenship rights be subject to such qualifications? Should the right to be represented in our national legislature be separated from the freedom to live anywhere in our land? I have always been under the impression that the basic rights insured the citizenry of these United States, as delineated in the Constitution, are unconditional and reserved for each and every American.

Once again we are required to review the Democratic principles on which our Nation was founded. The words of the Declaration of Independence speak eloquently to those principles: "Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;" these words should not, and cannot, be conveniently disregarded by denying full political rights to the residents of the District of Columbia.

As president of Self-Determination for the District of Columbia. I have been asked to represent the wide range of District citizens who have organized to obtain meaningful participation in their Government. We are assisted in that effort by nearly 3 million Americans from all across the Nation who have joined us, through our national coalition, to help us gain our rights. We District of Columbia residents do not have the power to change these anachronistic rules by which we are governed. Only these citizens of the 50 States, through their elected voting representatives in the U.S. Congress, have the power to change our status. We again ask you to make that change.

In this Congress which governs us, not one Member's vote is answerable to the people of the District of Columbia. It is, in fact, a Congress

whose constituents' interests are often directly contrary to the interests of District residents. The Congress, after all, is not elected by the District of Columbia citizens. We, like Americans in every part of the country, should be free to decide our laws for ourselves, correctly or incorrectly. If we truly believe in a free society, in the democracy we preach to the world, we should not and cannot have a double standard at home.

Mr. Chairman and honorable members of this committee, as the elected Chairman of the Council of the District of Columbia, I speak on behalf of the citizens of the District of Columbia who are unjustifiably, but effectively, disenfranchised. Thus, I enthusiastically support, and ask you to give your unanimous endorsement to, House Joint Resolution 139 which provides congressional representation for the District of Columbia in the House of Representatives and in the Senate of the United States.

The struggle to achieve suffrage for all American citizens has been a long and difficult one. The right to vote was extended to American citizens who were black in 1870; female, in 1920; and 18 years of age in 1971. The direct election of Senators by most of the citizens of these United States provided a more democratic Government in 1913. In 1971 we Americans residing in the District of Columbia were granted one long overdue opportunity at the polls, we were permitted to vote for the President and Vice President of the United States. This 23d amendment established the legal precedent for the amendment being considered today.

It is now more than 200 years since the founding of our Nation, and I sadly report that the struggle for full representation in Congress for the District of Columbia remains a dream. Let 1977 be the year to end the struggle and fulfill that dream. Let us, in 1977, finally have a democracy for all Americans.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. EDWARDS. Thank you, Mr. Tucker.

Our next witness, Ruth C. Clusen, president of the League of Women Voters of the United States.

Mrs. Clusen, it is nice to have you back.

Mrs. CLUSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was thinking as I sat here that I've appeared before this committee any number of times in the past few years, and as much as I enjoyed that experience, I hope this is, indeed, the last time.

It has always been a matter of great concern to the League of Women Voters that a basic right, representation in Congress for citizens, has not been granted to the residents of the Nation's Capital. I am here again today to renew our firm support for representation for the District.

We have felt particularly strongly about this because the League was born in 1920 out of the struggle to enfranchise women, and, so, we began very early in our history trying to seek redress for this other disenfranchised group, the citizens of the District of Columbia. Direct representation in Congress and in the electoral college for the citizens of the District became a part of our program in 1924, and over the years our members have pursued the goal of full representation and home rule. In 1961, we actively supported the ratification of the 23d amendment which gave the citizens of the District of Columbia the