Statehood and the numbers game

Part of what makes statehood such a sticky issue is that the rules are pretty murky, and there is no defined process that all states have followed. Admission has historically been dictated by the sentiments of US politicians, driven either by internal political struggle (as was the case with the admission of new states in the decades leading to the Civil War) or by external geopolitical strategy (see the cases of Texas, Alaska, and Hawaii). By nearly all measures, DC and PR (whose residents number at about 690,000 and over 3.2 million, respectively, according to the 2020 decennial census) exceed the demographic conventions of previously admitted states. However, while the population density of these two territories might appear to clear a minimum standard for admission, the historical record reveals lawmakers will find a purely quantitative argument uncompelling, thereby failing to persuade a critical mass to bring the question to the legislative floor. 

How are new states admitted? Is there a formal process that DC and PR might pursue?

The US Constitution outlines the general process by which new states are admitted into the union in Article IV, Section 3:

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.

Ultimately, Congress alone is responsible for accepting new states, but there are only a couple limitations on how new states are admitted. The first clause pronounces the requirement of the consent of state legislature(s), if a new state were to emerge from the territory of a pre-existing state. The second clause establishes the “equal footing doctrine,” which prohibits conditions on the entry of new states and ensures equal sovereignty. Beyond these rules, new states can come from anywhere, if Congress (and the people of the new state) so desire. This flexibility, however, leaves residents of DC and PR without precise recourse for their representational woes.

What the nineteenth century reveals to us is that an arbitrary, mathematical standard grew out of favor with Congressional legislators, as perhaps needlessly slowing the spread of representational power.

Students of antebellum US history might recall a more formal process by which unincorporated lands were organized and prepared for admission. Indeed, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 outlined a three-stage process for organizing the Northwest Territory, lands that the United States won in negotiating peace with Great Britain after the War for Independence. Today, this land comprises Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and the eastern part of Minnesota. In the first stage, outlined in Section 4, Congress appointed a rudimentary administrative structure to organize the territory: a governor, secretary, and three judges. Section 9 activated the second phase when the population reached “five thousand free male inhabitants of full age,” which granted the territory to create a territorial assembly and to elect one non-voting representative to Congress. The third and final stage of this process activated at “sixty thousand free inhabitants,” according to Article 5 of the ordinance, when the territory could be admitted on equal footing into the Union in accordance with the second clause of the US Constitution. In a period of steady natural increase, 5,000 and 60,000 persons could render territory inhabited (so long as we ignore the question of those persons and communities that had settled that land before the onslaught of white settlement). By these standards, DC and PR have exceeded the purely quantitative thresholds for admission. 

Later territories generally followed this model in anticipation of admission, but the organic acts—legislative actions that established administrative agencies and local government in these territories—did not prescribe a demographic minimum for these territories to meet. In fact, many admitted states in the nineteenth century failed to meet even the standards set forth in the Northwest Ordinance of 60,000 individuals. Illinois in 1818, Oregon in 1859, Nevada in 1864, and Idaho and Wyoming in 1890 were each admitted with fewer than 60,000 residents, according to either the census taken before or after admission, or according to the roughly annualized estimate. When it came to the US West, of course, the United States’s attempt to cement its territorial claims were inspired in part by its imperial rivalry with Great Britain. This fact was perhaps most famous in the contest over the Oregon Territory. But a similar contest with the Indigenous groups across the Great Plains encouraged rapid, perhaps hasty admission of the flyover states. As a result, the organic acts for territories such as Montana or Idaho included no language declaring a demographic minimum standard. 

What the nineteenth century reveals to us is that an arbitrary, mathematical standard grew out of favor with Congressional legislators, as perhaps needlessly slowing the spread of representational power.  

The nominal figures might be lower, but we should evaluate admissions figures according to their real weight. How underrepresented are the people living in DC and PR?

Using census data from the decade prior to, or concurring with, these territories’ admissions as states, we see that only in four cases did the territorial populations exceed the proportion of US citizens underrepresented in DC and PR. And only in the case of Maine and West Virginia—notably, these two territories had federal representation and were separated from incorporated states—did the proportion of citizens exceed the combined numbers of unrepresented citizens in DC and PR. In a quantitative argument, PR far-exceeds what has typically guaranteed a territory federal representation. But that same math makes DC’s case a little more difficult. A greater proportion of the United States’s total population in fifteen of the thirty-five states, a little under half, went underrepresented. This still leaves fifteen territories that had a far smaller share of the total population of US citizens that were eventually admitted to statehood. By several counts, DC and PR have a strong quantitative claim to statehood. 

Despite these numbers, the quantitative argument cannot be very compelling. If it were, the two territories would have long been admitted as states. This fact is especially true for DC, which experienced a slow decline in its population starting in the 1960s. Its population (and proportional population) was far higher at the beginning of the statehood movement than it currently stands. PR also has recently seen demographic shrinking in the past two censuses. Numbers alone do not convince lawmakers to act; there must be some other force compelling action, or lack thereof. So we’ll turn next to the rhetorical power of statehood and the changes to the ideological foundations of incorporation.

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   Early colonial charters, for instance, granted territorial claims that stretched all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Federal history reveals the heated rivalries between colonies-cum-states required rounds of arbitration in the days predating a discrete, national identity. West Virginia’s secession from Virginia materialized in the midst of violent, civil war.