Enabling Act
Read the federal law that allowed Washington to become a state.
Preface
AN ACT to provide for the division of Dakota into two States and to enable the people of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington to form constitutions and State governments and to be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, and to make donations of public lands to such States.
(Approved February 22, 1889.) [25 U.S. Statutes at Large, c 180 p 676.]
[President's proclamation declaring Washington a state: 26 St. at Large, Proclamations, p 1552, Nov. 11, 1889.]
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the inhabitants of all that part of the area of the United States now constituting the Territories of Dakota, Montana, and Washington, as at present described, may become the States of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington, respectively, as hereinafter provided.
SEC. 3.
That all persons who are qualified by the laws of said Territories to vote for representatives to the legislative assemblies thereof, are hereby authorized to vote for and choose delegates to form conventions in said proposed States; and the qualifications for delegates to such conventions shall be such as by the laws of said Territories respectively persons are required to possess to be eligible to the legislative assemblies thereof; and the aforesaid delegates to form said conventions shall be apportioned within the limits of the proposed States, in such districts as may be established as herein provided, in proportion to the population in each of said counties and districts, as near as may be, to be ascertained at the time of making said apportionments by the persons hereinafter authorized to make the same, from the best information obtainable, in each of which districts three delegates shall be elected, but no elector shall vote for more than two persons for delegates to such conventions; that said apportionments shall be made by the governor, the chief-justice, and the secretary of said Territories; and the governors of said Territories shall, by proclamation, order an election of the delegates aforesaid in each of said proposed States, to be held on the Tuesday after the second Monday in May, eighteen hundred and eighty-nine, which proclamation shall be issued on the fifteenth day of April, eighteen hundred and eighty-nine; and such election shall be conducted, the returns made, the result ascertained, and the certificates to persons elected to such convention issued in the same manner as is prescribed by the laws of the said Territories regulating elections therein for Delegates to Congress; and the number of votes cast for delegates in each precinct shall also be returned. The number of delegates to said conventions respectively shall be seventy-five; and all persons resident in said proposed States, who are qualified voters of said Territories as herein provided, shall be entitled to vote upon the election of delegates, and under such rules and regulations as said conventions may prescribe, not in conflict with this act, upon the ratification or rejection of the constitutions.