Final answer:
Before 1961, residents of the District of Columbia could not vote in presidential elections, but in 1964, they were granted three votes in the electoral college.
Step-by-step explanation:
Washington D.C. was initially set up as its own independent territory in order to keep the seat of the nation's power separate from the rest of the states.
When it was established, there was no expressed way for people who lived there to vote. It took almost two hundred years, but in 1964, with the passage of the Twenty Third Amendment, people living in the District of Columbia were granted three votes in the electoral college.