Twenty-Third Amendment

Originalist note

Ratified in 1961, the Twenty-Third Amendment postdates the founding by over a century and a half, so none of the wiki's founding-era sources speak to it directly. Its narrow, textually explicit design is itself an originalist-adjacent data point: rather than reinterpret the existing Electors Clause (Art. II sec. 1 cl. 2) to reach the District of Columbia, Congress and the ratifying states amended the text — confirming that under the original constitutional design the District, not being a "State," had no claim to presidential electors absent a textual amendment.

gap

No founding-era source in the wiki addresses District of Columbia representation in presidential elections; the Amendment's own 1960 legislative history is the relevant originalist anchor for its narrow scope.

Modern doctrine (Annotated Constitution)

Overview (Amdt23.1)

House Report No. 1698 explained that the Amendment would:

"provide the citizens of the District of Columbia with appropriate rights of voting in national elections for President and Vice President of the United States. It would permit District citizens to elect Presidential electors who would be in addition to the electors from the States and who would participate in electing the President and Vice President.

[This] . . . amendment would change the Constitution only to the minimum extent necessary to give the District appropriate participation in national elections. It would not make the District of Columbia a State. It would not give the District of Columbia any other attributes of a State or change the constitutional powers of the Congress to legislate with respect to the District of Columbia and to prescribe its form of government. . . . It would, however, perpetuate recognition of the unique status of the District as the seat of Federal Government under the exclusive legislative control of Congress." — H.R. Rep. No. 1698, 86th Cong., 2d Sess. 1, 2 (1960)

The Amendment is deliberately minimal: it grants the District electors "equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State," without conferring statehood or any other attribute of a state, and expressly leaves those electors bound by the procedures of the Twelfth Amendment.