Mr. VOLKMER. I question the analogy you draw between the exclusive legislative power the Congress has over forts, arsenals and other Government installations and its legislative exclusive power over the District.

As I understand it, a fort or arsenal has usually been acquired by the Federal Government subsequent to the time the State becomes a State, and the fort or arsenal although owned by the Federal Government, remains a part of that State. The District, however, is property which was ceded to the Federal Government by the State of Maryland and is no longer part of Maryland.

Is such a distinction significant to your theory?

Mr. THORNTON. Well, if I may respond to that: I believe that the District of Columbia, as it now exists, was originally a part of the State of Maryland.

Mr. VOLKMER. Yes.

Mr. THORNTON. The act of cession did occur after the State of Maryland was a State and is a variation of the method by which Federal lands are acquired with the consent of the legislature of the State for purposes of arsenals.

I should also emphasize that the conclusion that you can do this by statute has been precedented by the action in 1846 of retroceding to the State of Virginia all that portion of the District which had been granted by Virginia.

Mr. VOLKMER. Therefore, you would retrocede to Maryland voting rights?

Mr. THORNTON. That is correct.

Mr. VOLKMER. Under your theory, are you retroceding more than voting rights? It seems to me, there is a two step process: you retrocede to Maryland the geographical area of the District of Columbia, and then in the same act retain Federal properties therein.

Mr. THORNTON. The retrocession would not be of geographical area. It would not be a total retrocession, but rather a retrocession of certain aspects of sovereignty.

It could be done as you described, by retroceding all and retaining part-in other words, you would suggest retroceding everything except what is retained. It might be that that would be the suitable way of describing the mechanism for change.

Mr. VOLKMER. Rather than doing it your way and saying we are going to retrocede the right to vote in congressional elections in the State of Maryland.

Mr. THORNTON. The question is: Which way would more appropriately describe the rights which are retroceded? One way would be to affirmatively list the rights which are retroceded and say we are retroceding those rights. The other would be to say we are retroceding all rights except those which are retained by the United States in the military arsenals, forts, et cetera, which are found throughout the United States.

Mr. VOLKMER. Thank you very much.

Mr. EDWARDS. How does this work for elections of Senators.

Mr. THORNTON. For the Senators you would have the population of approximately 750,000, approximately, of the District of Columbia who would be eligible to vote in the senatorial elections of Maryland.

This population would have a significant impact upon the selection of Senators from that State.

After one election, the Senators who would represent the State of Maryland would be very cognizant of their constituency within the District of Columbia. This would have the effect, also, of not diluting the representation in the Senate and thereby making it easier for a legislation like this to pass that body.

Mr. EDWARDS. Of course, under the one-person, one-vote rule, the two Members of the House of Representatives would not necessarily come from Washington, D.C.

Mr. THORNTON. That's correct. The redistricting lines would be drawn by the State of Maryland. In districting, it would be possible to either form the two districts as metropolitan districts in which the representatives would be clearly responsive to the voting constituency within the city, or you could have districts which reached into the city and into rural areas.

However, in looking at the makeup of population in this area, it would seem to me that any effort to subdivide the city and carry parts of the city out into the surrounding communities would result in the residents of the District of Columbia not electing just two representatives, but probably having a majority vote in three of four representative elections.

So I think it most likely to the districting which would be accomplished would be according to metropolitan lines.

Mr. McCLORY. The problem that bothers me is this:

How do we establish these congressional districts? If we are going to establish congressional districts on the basis of a State legislature elected by voters from the State of Maryland without the participation of voters in the District of Columbia who are granted only the right to vote in the national elections, it seems to me that we are going to be confronted with a virtually insurmountable problem.

I would question that the Congress by legislation could grant voting rights to persons to vote in State legislative bodies.

Mr. THORNTON. My suggestion was that the voting rights be retroceded to the State of Maryland for Federal elections. However, I think it would be very difficult, once that retrocession occurs, for the State of Maryland not to permit voting of citizens of the District of Columbia for State elections as well.

With regard to the other question, Mr. McClory, I can only suggest that in my view the proposal is one that can be accomplished by statute, and I recognize that there might be an argument as to whether it could be done that way.

But I think the language of the Constitution, because this negotiation of voting rights is only inferentially drawn, and because deprivation of voting rights certainly is counter to the whole body of thought in the United States, legal presumptions would tend to validate a statute designed to accomplish the worthwhile objective of granting voting rights.

Mr. McCLORY. If the Chairman would yield.

If I understand your position, it is not that the Congress should by legislation grant voting rights to these persons who are in the retroceded area to vote for members of the State Legislature of the State of Maryland. We would assume that if the right to vote in the

national elections, which we would have authority to do, is accomplished, we would hope or expect that the Maryland State Legislature would accord voting rights to these other persons.

Mr. THORNTON. I think you correctly describe my minimum position on it, that that would be our hope or expectation.

I think it might follow as a matter of law that the retrocession of voting rights would carry with it the full citizenship of these citizens within the State of Maryland. That is the optimistic side of the cession. If it does not carry that right with it, then it would be my expectation that the State of Maryland would soon extend that right.

Mr. MCCLORY. If the chairman would yield, I would just ask this one more question and then I will not ask for any more time.

Are you saying, then, that the retrocession that you now speak of would be complete retrocession of territories, such as the retrocession of District territory to the State of Virginia?

Mr. THORNTON. It would be complete, insofar as the rights which are under discussion are concerned, while maintaining the status of the District of Columbia throughout its entire geographical area in the same legislative control position as forts or arsenals.

Mr. McCLORY. Thank you.

Mr. EDWARDS. Mr. Butler.

Mr. BUTLER. I thank the gentleman for his testimony. I appreciate your participating in this hearing.

I recall that I signed your views earlier, so I guess to the extent that I may take a different position today, I will resort to the flexibility which was alluded to by an earlier witness. [Laughter.]

I do have some reservations about this. For example, you are kind of hanging your hat on the historical accident that this area, the District of Columbia, happened to have at one time been a part of Maryland.

We use the language of retrocession to describe what would happen. But actually, what you are proposing is a simple statute which would say that for purposes of representation in the Congress of the United States, residents of the District of Columbia, shall be residents of the State of Maryland. And that is simply what you are proposing here.

Mr. THORNTON. That is a way of describing it. But actually, I would propose to recognize the difference which does exist. The United States is sovereign in the District of Columbia. And I am proposing to retrocede those aspects of sovereignty back to Maryland.

Mr. BUTLER. But the only aspect of sovereignty that you are retroceding is the voting aspect?

Mr. THORNTON. That is correct.

Wait a second, the voting rights, plus the right to the State of Maryland to do the redistricting and to take

Mr. BUTLER, Well, that's a right they already have...

Mr. THORNTON. Right..

Mr. BUTLER. Well, I guess that's my next question. Clarence Mitchell suggested that Maryland does not want to do this. Does this require their assent?

Mr. THORNTON. Well, our colleague Charles Wiggins suggested in a supplemental view to the 1974 report that in his view the retrocession of rights by the United States to a State did not require the consent of the State involved. That is a significant question.

Mr. BUTLER. I expect that if we are going to expand their representation in the Senate, the number of people who vote, then we are denying equal suffrage under article 5 of the Constitution: no State will be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate. We are diluting the representation of Maryland when we say that you are not equal to others; because you have to let all these others

Mr. THORNTON. That is based upon the assumption that the residents of the District of Columbia cannot be given treatment as residents as the State of Maryland. If they are residents of the State of Maryland, then Maryland like all other States would have two Senators.

Mr. BUTLER. What about State income tax?

Mr. THORNTON. It might be essential to retrocede taxing authorities along with representation authority.

Mr. BUTLER. Thank you.

Mr. EDWARDS. Mr. Volkmer?

Mr. VOLKMER. Let us carry that point further. If you also retrocede taxing authority, District residents, unless represented in the Maryland Assembly, would have no power to determine how those revenues would be distributed to the various State programs.

Mr. THORNTON. I agree. And the parallel that I described initially and which you helped to develop a possible alternative statutory way for accomplishing the same thing, namely retroceding all, but then retaining the rights which are appropriate to a fort, arsenal, or other Federal installation would accomplish just that.

The citizens, then, would for the same effect and purposes as the citizens who live at the naval air station at Pensacola have the right to vote in the State elections, et cetera.

Mr. VOLKMER. Have you given any consideration to the 23d amendment to the Constitution which gave the voters of the District of Columbia the right to elect or vote for the President and Vice President.

Your proposal, I assume, would not change this at all.

Mr. THORNTON. That is correct, but I want to thank the gentleman for bringing this up because it points out another very important feature of this proposal. When you accomplish something like this by constitutional amendment, you are very likely to make significant mistakes and the 23d amendment seems to me to have been a mistake in that it now provides for a lesser representation in the election of electors than the people of this area should be entitled to on a population basis. Constitutional amendments do not change with growth in population, or other circumstances.

Statutory retrocession such as I describe would accomplish that. Mr. VOLKMER. Thank you.

Mr. EDWARDS. Are there further questions?

[No response.]

Mr. EDWARDS. If not, we thank you very much.

Mr. THORNTON. Thank you very much.

Mr. EDWARDS. Our next witness is Mr. David Junious. David, a high school student, has already received fame in Washington as an outstanding young person in the District. He shows great promise as a future civic leader of residents here.

TESTIMONY OF DAVID JUNIOUS, CITIZEN, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Mr. JUNIOUS. My name is David Junious. For the past 5 years, I have lived in 2027 13th Street NW., in Washington, D.C.

I am a member of the youth counsel of the local NAACP. The last school I attended was Garnett Patterson Junior High School from which I graduated last year as valedictorian. Because of this, I have been lucky enough to win two scholarships.

Through my father, who is active in the NAACP here, we children have become interested in American history. In fact, one of my favorite subjects in school is history. Some time ago, my class studied the Constitution and the place it has in our lives.

I learned some interesting things that I feel are important for every American to know. I was taught that one of our most precious rights is the right to be represented in Government.

The Revolutionary War broke out because England wouldn't give the colonists that right. For that reason, I couldn't understand at that time why people living in the District of Columbia were not fully represented in our National Government. It has been 2 years since then, and I still haven't figured it out.

I found out that blacks were given the right to vote by the 15th amendment, and 18-year-olders were given that right by the 26th amendment. Then why am I not able to be represented here in Washington?

I am only 16, but I look forward to voting when I am older. I hope to be able to vote for someone who has power to represent me. I guess my family and I could move back to my old home in Sumter, S.C. But I am not sure if we can afford to.

Anyway, I like the District of Columbia better and I wouldn't want to leave my friends here. I wish someone could tell me what to do.

[Applause.]

Mr. EDWARDS. Thank you. That is a very eloquent statement, David. I have one question for you. Do most of your friends agree with you on this issue? Are they also concerned?

Mr. JUNIOUS. Yes; they are.

Mr. EDWARDS. I am glad to hear that. Before you know it, you will be voting, and I hope you will be voting for U.S. Senators and for the U.S. House Members.

I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. BUTLER. Well, I would not presume to tell you what to do. I think you are moving in the right direction and you don't need a whole lot of advice.

But I am curious; when did your folks move here from Sumter, S.C.?

Mr. JUNIOUS. Well, we moved here about 5 years ago.

Mr. BUTLER. And prior to that, were they voting in South Carolina? Mr. JUNIOUS. Yes; they were.

Mr. BUTLER. And are they still voting in South Carolina?

Mr. JUNIOUS. Well, no, because they have moved up here now.