They will use any excuse to disenfranchise voters.

I sure as hell wouldn't draw anything on the ballot.
Unless you don't want your vote to count.

... on that section of the ballot.

In what universe?

... despite being a U.S. citizen who pays taxes and served in the military.

Sorry; we all have lines we draw. I'm confident my vote for Obama will be counted, but despite my respect for her I'm not going to vote for Congresswoman Norton because of DC's colonial status.

Defacing your ballot will get it thrown out. Just don't mark the ballot for races where you do not like anyone running.
I do this all the time. Even if I know the person and know in fact they will win, there is a count of unmarked ballots in the results for each race here in Hawaii. My vote count would show up on many of those.
Not marking it is like saying none of the above. But do not deface your ballot!

And this is one form of protest of that.

If you're going to protest why not actually protest. Wasting your vote by defacing your ballot does nothing but get your vote thrown out.

Why waste your vote? This sure as hell shouldn't be promoted on DU.

We had a push for this back in the 90's and it didn't catch on, but this is what I intend to do.

That's how I met the current mayor, in fact.

So why are you taking it out on her?

Oh, and if you want your vote for president to count, you might want to think twice about defacing a ballot.

President a vote.

Still have the mayor etc as cities do but representation in congress as per maryland.

Or "recession for purposes of Congressional voting" or something.

Good luck getting Annapolis to go along with that.

I wonder if they could still spin of the federal areas and keep them as a seperate entity.