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Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

It was a huge mistake to allow people to live inside DC in the first place. The National Capital that is part of no state shouldn't have anyone actually be a resident.

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That particular mistake is too late to rectify now, unless someone is proposing to relocate 700,000 people. Hell, even just letting them vote as unofficial residents of the nearest state would solve the problem; Maryland can have those votes for federal office without having D.C. yield any of its own authority to enforce its borders.

Not really. Arlington VA was retroceded, no reason the rest (aside from actual federal buildings and facilities) couldn't be.

I imagine it's possible, but "no reason" is definitely a stretch. The parts of DC that are federal land are hardly contiguous, and trying to force a clean split between DC and Maryland looks like it would be a nightmare: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/local/dc-marijuana-m...

you wouldn't have to be perfect. You could carve out just the contiguous core. I believe this was floated by Jeff Flake. Federal buildings can, in general, exist on state land.

The biggest reason would be that the people of Maryland oppose retrocession. [1] You cannot make Maryland take back land they do not want without something like an amendment to the constitution.

Each year DC pays more federal taxes per capita than every other state. In raw dollars it is more than 22 other states. [2] The people of DC want representation to go along with that taxation.

[1] https://www.publicpolicypolling.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/..., Q22 on page 6.

[2] https://statehood.dc.gov/page/why-statehood-dc

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