Like all Americans, residents of Washington, DC pay federal income taxes, serve on juries and fight and die in wars to defend democracy. Yet for more than 200 years, District residents have been denied voting representation in the U.S. Congress, the very body that controls every aspect of the citizens’ judicial, executive and legislative rights. The time has come for the U.S. Congress to end taxation without representation.

We, the undersigned, believe that the more than half a million residents of the District of Columbia, as full and equal American citizens, have an inalienable right to be represented by fully empowered members in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.