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viability of the current system of voluntary, partial public funding of presidential elections
appears to have all but collapsed. The top tier of candidates from both parties in 2004
chose to forgo the public financing that was available to them in order to free themselves
from the spending limits it entailed, and the same pattern is emerging in the 2008 race.
Public financing has become the redoubt of troubled campaigns that are unable to raise
funds to compete head-to-head with the front-runners.71 As the costs of airtime on
television and radio is often the largest expense associated with campaigning, some have
proposed that the airwaves be harnessed to provide equal access to candidates as a
public service.72

Voting Rights for the District of Columbia

The 585,000 residents of the District of Columbia do not enjoy the same political rights as
other U.S. citizens. There are also a number of small U.S. island territories that have limited
access to the federal political process, including American Samoa,Guam, , and the
U.S. Virgin Islands. Puerto Rico is the largest, though its citizens have consistently voted to
retain the island’s current intermediary status as a commonwealth rather than seek full
statehood or independence. As U.S. territories that are not states, these five jurisdictions
fall into a constitutional lacuna that leaves their residents with many of the obligations of
citizenship but without a say in the election of full voting members of Congress. Their
elected delegates have long been permitted to participate in the deliberations of the
House and to vote in House committees. In 1993 and again in 2007, Democratic
majorities in the House adopted a procedural rule that permits the five delegates to vote
with the full House, but their votes count only if they have no effect on a measure’s
ultimate outcome. None of the five territories are represented in the Senate.Puerto Rico
The District is noteworthy in this group because it is the seat of the national government
and because, unlike Puerto Rico, its citizens do not control their own destiny.
Unfortunately, the intertwined issues of race and partisanship that arise in other aspects of
the American political process are evident in this issue as well. Since the population of the
District is mostly African American and overwhelmingly Democratic in its political
preferences, consideration of how to provide equitable political representation to these
citizens is often hampered by partisan wrangling.73 Fortuitously, the grievance felt by
predominantly Republican Utah, which narrowly missed receiving the 435th seat in the
House of Representative following the 2000 census, as discussed earlier, provided the
basis for a compromise in 2007 that would have extended full voting rights to a
representative from the District. The proposal would have enlarged the House of
Representatives to 437 and given one seat each to the District and Utah. However, the
measure was blocked in the Senate by the threat of a filibuster and appears to have died
for the time being.74
In 1961, the 23rd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, granting the District
electors in the Electoral College. District residents have thus participated in presidential
elections since 1964. In 1978, Congress passed another constitutional amendment that
would have given the District its own voting members of Congress, making it virtually a
state. However, the amendment was given a seven-year time limit for ratification by the

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