Amendment XXIII

Section 1. The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as Congress may direct: A number of electors of President and Vice President 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; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.

Section 2.
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.


The twenty-third amendment extends the right to vote in the presidential election to citizens residing in the District of Colombia by granting them electors in the electoral college. Article II, Section I, goes along with this amendment. This officially elects the President and the Vice President every four years. They are elected by electors who are chosen by popular vote on a state-by-state basis. Prior to the twenty-third amendment, the District of Columbia was not a state, so it did not have any electors. Their first presidential election that they were able to vote in was the election of 1964, three years after the amendment was ratified. The district, though, is only allowed as many electors as the least populous state. Wyoming is the least populous state, which has only three electors, so the district is only allowed three electors.

This gave residents in D.C. the rights to vote.