Puerto Ricans cannot vote in general elections despite being U.S. citizens, but they can exert a powerful influence with relatives on the mainland. Phones across the island of 3.2 million people were ringing minutes after the speaker derided the U.S. territory Sunday night, and they still buzzed Monday.
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is competing with Trump to win over Puerto Rican communities in Pennsylvania and other swing states. Shortly after stand-up comic Tony Hinchcliffe said that, “I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Puerto Rican reggaeton superstar Bad Bunny announced he was backing Harris.
After Sunday’s rally, a senior adviser for the Trump campain, Danielle Alvarez, said in a statement that Hinchcliffe’s joke did “not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
Why is it that an American citizen living in, for example, France or any foreign country can vote but Americans in Puerto Rico can not?
Because the U.S. is a failed democracy. It labels places like Puerto Rico as a territory.
Biden calling Trump supporters trash is far more damaging.
The double standard is eye watering.
Trump painted ALL Democrats as literal demons for years. Not figuratively, like literally, you could fill encyclopedias with his rhetoric. And it barely moves the needle.
But one gaff from Biden is damaging?
Ugh. You are probably not wrong, unfortunately.
After 8 years of Trump showing us exactly the kind of garbage person he is, the crimes he commits, the people he supports, how unpatriotic he is, the ideals and policies he endorses… if you’re still in his camp mayhaps you are trash.
No calling trash trash is fine
But he didn’t call trash trash
Yeah I’m sure it pushed all the Trump supporters who were about to vote for Harris into rethinking their positions…
I really hope this is true and they can make a TRUE difference in the swing states. I was watching some interviews and in some cases there were Puerto Ricans that were annoyed but were still going to vote for Trump anyway!
I saw a video of the ‘comedy’ that was said about Puerto Rico and I am honestly just fucking baffled as to why they hate them that much? I guess all they need to be to be hated is just be browner than they are.
Also how come the issue of Trump’s disgusting behavior during Hurricane Maria and his refusal to fully help them beyond a stupid stunt that had him throw a paper towel at someone’s face.
Brown bad
- GOP
The GOP controllers aren’t the racists though. They’re rich, and puppets to the wealthy. In order to remain in positions of power, they create an enemy, in the form of bigotry and racism. Their sheep are racists. This is why though I trust very few politicians, I trust the Dems more atm because they are not using hatred and violence.
I’m not so sure, I bet some (or most?) of them are racist too. I’m sure they play it up, but do you really think they are all that accepting of people of color?
I think they are accepting of themselves and only thmselves so long as their selfishness is to benefit. For sure though, the act of leading people with racist rhetoric is as bad or even worse than racism itself.
deleted by creator
And?
A lot of them don’t know that Puerto Ricans are Americans. So, add xenophobia to the racism.
Man when I went to pr for a quick vacation the amount of people asking about passports floored me. I was like it’s a us territory how have you not learnt that in school?
Also I got lots of local pr Spanish slang, they’re chill peeps and mofongo is the best. I think they should get statehood they’re bigger in population than the state I grew up in and it would be nice to shake up us politics with more senate seats.
Arroz con Pollo. I can eat that all. Day.
Every time there’s a vote on becoming a state they vote no. I don’t think it should be forced on them.
The last time there was a plebiscite in 2020, voting on whether to become a state or not, the outcome was for statehood by 52.34%.
I didn’t know about that one. Traditionally they’ve always voted no. Why didn’t they move forward with it?
It’s not forced, every state was a territory and chose to become a state. That’s the prescribed way for this to go. Why do we want to change that now? Part of statehood also changes things like federal aid etc as you’ll now be paying federal taxes but a part of this representation involves all this extra.
I’m not suggesting we change it. Puerto Rico has held votes on whether to become a state, and traditionally voted no. That’s all the reason I need to let them stay a territory.
I’m not opposed to them becoming a state if they want, another commenter told.me the latest vote was ‘yes’ by a narrow margin so who knows what will happen next.
They’re brown AND their country has a very Spanish sounding name. I can hear <insert drunk uncle> talking about it now: “any sumbitches from a place called PWER-TOE REEE-KO ain’t Mexicans just as much as any sand n*****s from Saudi Arabia ain’t AY-RABS!”
I was thinking the guy is an idiot and meant to say Cuba but I have no idea. This is the first time I’ve ever heard anybody talk crap about Puerto Rico and it made no sense.
Trump has a bad record with Puerto Rico, hes shit on them a few times and blocked aid when they were hit with a hurricane during his admin
I assumed he meant to say Haiti, which is still awful, but at least it would have kind of made sense…poorly.
No. This is NOT shaping the race. VOTE
This changes nothing not a single Trump voter changed their minds. The Trump Puerto Ricans agree with this. They just think it’s the ‘others’ fault.
VOTE
I wish you were wrong
After Sunday’s rally, a senior adviser for the Trump campain, Danielle Alvarez, said in a statement that Hinchcliffe’s joke did “not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
“All the stuff about you people being vermin that poison the blood of America, though, we meant that.”
What an incredibly stupid thing for them to say. This was an official election rally, and they 100% vetted every joke before he went out there. If they didn’t, they’re incompetent. So either way, their own weak ass defense is damning.
I think the cluste4fuck that was the aftermath of the earthquake in Puerto Rico was a unifying moment for America.
Trump’s supporters and haters all agreed that the President of Puerto Rico was a useless, arrogant, son of a bitch.
Reminder: The only reason Puerto Ricans cannot vote is because Republicans refuse to recognize it as a state, and they do that because they don’t want brown people to vote, and they don’t want brown people to vote because they don’t want them to exist.
As much as I hate the GOP, Puerto Rico has never attempted to apply for statehood. Their referendums on the subject have never shown a large enough amount of support for them to try a real vote. They’re typically around a 50-50 split.
State or not I think its pretty ridiculous that they are american citizens but can’t vote for president of the united states… People living in DC get to vote and aren’t living in a state.
But they choose to not. One of those cake and eat it too scenarios.
A territory like them is eligible for Federal money from various programs, while not having to pay Federal income tax. If they became a state, they’d then have to pay income tax, lose benefit of the free program money, but be allowed to vote.
If you don’t want to fully commit to the whole package and are milking the advantages of being a territory, should you really get a right to choose how the package that is being taxed and giving you free money is steered?
(Oversimplification, of course.)
If I were a member of a territory, I don’t really know where my thoughts would land.
However, as one that is taxed, it seems that allowing the untaxed to choose our taxed destiny would be disingenuous.
Only citizens residing in a state for the majority of the year can vote for federal elections. Basically you need a senator to vote federally. Hawaii and all other states were the same way when they too were territories. All PR needs to do is vote for statehood and then I guess the political shitshow starts as well as flag redesign.
You aren’t correct. https://www.fvap.gov/citizen-voter/voting-residence
You generally need to have established residency in a state at some point in your life, but there is zero requirement to spend any time there if you live abroad in order to retain your voting rights. Several states allow children who have been born overseas the right to vote at their parents last US address.
However, because Puerto Rico is part of the United States, residents there (even if you retired there after living in New York your entire life) fall under the rules for Puerto Rico.
So, you can live in Mexico as a US Citizen, permanently, and retain voting rights in your last state… Or you can live in Puerto Rico and lose the ability to vote for president.
Fair should have said Puerto Ricans.
Except we made an exception for citizens that reside in Washington DC. They have no representative in the senate, but were given 3 electoral college votes for president and vice president.
So we totally can (and have) extended the right to vote to citizens living outside one of the 50 states to vote, we just won’t for Puerto Rico. :(
That exception was the 23rd amendment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-third_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Puerto Ricans as an example don’t meet the same conditions e.g. paying federal income tax. Hence statehood as their option to representation.
What are the main reasons they have for not voting in favour of statehood?
Hear me out here, turn Puerto Rico into a state and combine both north and south Dakota into a new state called “One big Dakota”. We wouldn’t even need to change the flag, and the population of one big Dakota might break 5 digits.
After Sunday’s rally, a senior adviser for the Trump campain, Danielle Alvarez, said in a statement that Hinchcliffe’s joke did “not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
Your team knew exactly who he is and you specifically invited him to be part of your event.
The Trump team also asked him to remove the word C*** from his set before he went on and he agreed.
The Trump team reviewed his set before he went on and did not have issues with Puerto Rico comments.
They say he was going off script for that part. But of course they would say that.
Ya, that whole set-up, punchline situation just came to him in the spur of the moment.
I don’t believe them either. Just saying that’s the lazy excuse they gave.
Taxation without representation
the nation that started as a rebellion on this is doing the same thing to its own citizens? that’s like building the land of the free using slave labor!
Well as long as we don’t live in an oligarchy I guess we’re ok then
Puerto Rico needs to be a state already. Washington DC too.
What happened “no taxation without representation” that the colonists fought for in the war of independence? Apparently it only applies to white people.
If definitely only did apply to white people. And only men.
Landowning white men to be precise.
It was a lie from the start, it only ever applied to a few wealthy old white men who didn’t want any cuts to their profit margins after the British fought a costly war to defend them from French and Native retaliation.
Same thing that happened to the WMD in Iraq. And the “good of the people” in Guatemala.
That’s why they don’t pay federal taxes
While they dont pay income taxes to the IRS, they do pay customs taxes, federal commodity taxes, and federal payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment) to the IRS, which sounds alot like federal taxes to me.
It also feels like it’s something different because they aren’t supposed to go into the general fund, but advance payment for specific benefits
But they don’t have a say in how the money is spent or whether the tax should exist. So it’s still the same issue whether it’s for a specific purpose or whether or not they benefit from it. It’s the freedom of choice that they still don’t have.
bingo
There is an attempt to conform to the taxation/representation issue, but it’s never going to be 100%. Non-citizens and foreign entities are going to be subject to certain taxes within the US as well. At a simple level, there’s no way avoid sales taxes. People have to pay sales tax in states they can’t vote in either
Sales tax is different. That pays for the infrastructure to get the goods to market, theoretically. Though admittedly that is not exactly true everywhere, the general idea of sales tax is for economic reasons, not residential.
And of course it’s not going to be 100%, but we’re talking about large portions of the population that were purposely excluded, e.g. women, slaves, etc., in the past, and currently lots of people of all genders and races who live in Puerto Rico, Guam, D.C, etc…
PR alone accounts for over 3 million adults, or about 1% of the US population, with little to no representation, most of them citizens. Wyoming only has about 580,000 people, or about 0.17% of the population, but controls 2% of the Senate, 0.23% of the house, and 0.56% of the presidential election.
Puerto Rico periodically votes on whether or not to pursue becoming a state, becoming a state doesn’t win except in one vote that was specifically a non-binding vote on the topic and that had much lower turnout than other votes on the idea.
DC was literally created specifically to not be a state, so that no state held the seat of the federal government.
Combine the Carolinas and Dakotas, add DC and Puerto Rico. No flag change.
Add DC, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and we have 53 states. 53 is a prime number, and therefore we would be indivisible.
Got it, so North Carokota, South Dakolina, and DC and Puerto Rico. I think it’s a great idea.
ok but why does carakota go kinda hard
I have no problem with Dakolina either
I was gonna say it’s ridiculous to make DC a state, it’s just a city!
Turns out more people live in DC than Wyoming or Vermont LOL. So I’m down!
Also I’ve heard that monkey’s brains, although popular in Cantonese cuisine, are not often found there.
But it doesn’t have an airport. Or a car dealership. There’s a car dealership a few blocks from the Capitol building, but it doesn’t have one.
(This was an actual argument from the GOP on the floor of Congress.)
“The Constitution doesn’t say a state has to have an airport or a car dealership.”
“WeLL It ShOuLd! We DoN’t WaNt sHiThOlE sTaTeS!!1!!”
Turns out communism was just a red herring!
A few people were clued into that reference, I see…
IIRC if DC became a state, only specific federal buildings, such as the white house, scotus & the capitol buildings would remain as a territory (due to the constitution), but, because of a amendment to the us constitution giving DC the same amount of voters _(members of the electoral college)_for the president as the lowest-representation (essentially always 3), which only citizens living inside the area would be allowed to vote for, only the citizens of white house would be able to vote for 3 whole electors.
I might be incirrect, as I am not a US citizen, but I’ve seen this mentioned somewhere long ago
If DC were converted to a state, presumably this would be changed so there would be no district. The federal buildings would just be buildings in that state.
I’m not sure if that’s right or not, but there’s been some loopholes around DC’s status before. For example, all members of Congress are considered city alders for DC. In practice, they delegate that to local elected officials and everything works like a normal US city.
Same trick here. Delegate those EC votes to follow the popular vote of the city.
Look man. I know NC is far from perfect, but don’t lump me in with SC okay.
If we combined Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming, and both Dakotas into one mega state, they’d have about the population of South Carolina.
But somehow they get 17 electoral votes to SCs 9 and 10 senators to California’s 2.
So I vote for Monomskakota!
As a GA resident right across the river from SC, I understand that sentiment. SC sucks. Those bastards stole our city name and our fuckin baseball team.
But think about all the food down there in SC, y’all can claim it. Maybe they’ll take some of the empathy and intersectional community minded mutual aid networks y’all got and we can all be a little fatter and happier.
Plus, we all get more papusas and salpicon!
But first you should probably fix those islanders that aren’t even citizens.
Iirc making people citizenshipless is even against international law?
Which islanders are you referring to?
People born in Guam, the US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa all have American citizenship (just like Puerto Ricans).
American Samoans don’t get citizenship
https://ballotpedia.org/Citizenship_status_in_territories_of_the_United_States
Ok, technically they are US nationals but not US citizens. They still have US passports, but their passports are slightly different.
International law defines a “stateless” person as neither a national nor a citizen of any country. So the UN Conventions on Statelessness do not apply to American Samoans. Likewise the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights provide guarantees of “nationality”, not citizenship.
not illegal then, you’re right.
But it’s still an absolute shamelessnes that they aren’t even citizens of the country their homeland, their native land belongs to.
they’re not even citizens of a protectorate.
People born in American Samoa generally consider themselves citizens of American Samoa. Even though they have US passports, they can vote for their own government and write their own laws. Including laws that might be overturned by American courts if American Samoans were fully US citizens.
For example, there are restrictions on buying land in American Samoa if you are not a “blood” descendant of American Samoans.
It is prohibited to alienate any lands except freehold lands to any person who has less than one-half native blood…
If a person who has any nonnative blood marries another person who has any nonnative blood, the children of such marriage cannot inherit land unless they are of at least one-half native blood.
In other words, Mark Zuckerburg cannot swoop into American Samoa and buy half of an island.
That’s why it’s not so surprising that the government of American Samoans, as well as a majority of its citizens, is opposed to becoming US citizens. They have seen what happened to native Hawaiians, and they don’t want the same.
Sadly it’s not like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statelessness
Canada, for example, withdraw the citizenship to children of Canadians that haven’t lived at least 1 year in Canada before 18yo
Yeah, people can’t have no citizenship.
Edit: my information was out of date
Tell the Puerto Ricans that, we’re waiting on them reaching 51% in favor.
They reached a majority vote in favor of statehood in the 2020 referendum. We’re waiting on Congress. There’s supposed to be another vote in this general election.
Make them a state, or give them independence. The will of the people of Puerto Rico should decide, but the current status is untenable.
they should be a state. if they become independent the US will fuck them over forever.
Maybe Canada could take it? I’d vote for that.
Well, they’d be thrown in with the rest of islands of the Caribbean on that one. That’s something that should change regardless.
yeah but it won’t. if they become a state they get a voice. if they become independent they will get devastated by the US just like Haiti. and a lot of other countries.
Why does DC need to be separate anyway? Does any other country do it like that?
Edit: yes, a few, but not really any I would look to as role models: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_district
It doesn’t, and the reasons for being that way are long in the past. The originally US wanted to avoid any state having the capitol at a time when states were more independent entities than they are now. People weren’t really meant to live there at all. Politicians and there staff would travel in from the surrounding areas. Of course, it’s evolved way past that, and the citizens of DC deserve the full representation of statehood.
Why the fuck are US citizens not allowed to vote in a US election?
Because each state is given the power to elect a president, not the voters. Puerto Rico isn’t a state so their voters aren’t represented properly.
i mean the technicallity is that washington dc isnt a state either, so the better answer is that you need to live in a region where you have representatives.
Dc does not have voting representatives in congress. They only get electoral votes because of the 23rd ammendment
The better question is “why didn’t the 23rd grant voting rights to all US citizens in all territories?”
gonna be honest with you, its racism.
Because of slavery, basically. The US couldn’t have a directly-elected president at founding because that would mean slaveholding states would get less power per person actually living there, unless they wanted to let slaves vote which of course they wouldn’t. So 3/5ths compromise, electoral college, yadda yadda yadda, and 250 years later power still is filtered through the states. So now that that’s the case, giving any new people voting rights would change the power balance between the
slaveholdersright andabolitionistsleft. So as a result, places like PR that have an abnormal amount ofminoritiesDemocratic voters tend to be unable to get Congress to grant them voting rights.
but the context of the news report is about the president, which they can vote for.
Also because DC and PR would most likely vote democrats it makes it harder. Most of the time when a state joined the union there was a fight.
What happened to “no taxation without representation”…?
Lots of people move to Puerto Rico for tax purposes.
Never existed in the US. Women, slaves, prisoners, permanent residents, etc… It’s always been in the hands of the rich. They just pretend to listen to the people. But as Trump has many times noted, the vote doesn’t matter. The state can send delegates with any instructions they want and the federal government can decide state delegates are not valid and exclude them. Most states have laws to follow the vote, but it’s not the federal government’s job to enforce those laws if they chose not to follow them. That would be for the people of that state to fight later.
Ask some of the 14-17 year olds working their first jobs paying tax without the ability to vote. That was never a real concern for anyone outside landowning whites.
Easy, they don’t pay federal taxes
While they dont pay income taxes to the IRS, they do pay customs taxes, federal commodity taxes, and federal payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment) to the IRS, which sounds alot like federal taxes to me.
It also feels like it’s something different because they aren’t supposed to go into the general fund, but advance payment for specific benefits
Do they receive those benefits?
Yes.
Taxes are just when the goverment demands money. It doesn’t require they spend (or not spend) on anything in particular.
That’s not true. There are technically different classifications. For example, fees are specifically not taxes.
the electoral college values different things than the will of the populace
Which was actually supposed to prevent Trump, but the founding fathers couldn’t have predicted the modern world.
Well, they did. It was referred to by the Framers as a “Living Document” and they intended us to re-write it as we grew as a nation:
"The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another…
On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation…
Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right."
-Tommy J.
What happened to that law?
The Dixie-crats.
This message was brought to you by Brando.
one more reason why the popular vote would be better than the shitshow this is
History tells me that if the US is disenfranchising a group of people, it’s usually racism
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0065
There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.
The problem with the south, is that everything they do looks like it’s all about racism, but they actually use their virulent and brutal racism to cover more evil selfishness. They’re just monstrously racist as a hobby, corruption is their true passion.
Puerto Rico is a protectorate and has its own government. Puerto Ricans can’t vote while on the island, but can vote in the US
Every US State has its own government, too. I don’t see that as an excuse.
The Constitution says that each state shall send electors to the electoral college. So Puerto Rico’s status as an unorganized territory is a bit of a blocker.
The District of Columbia is also not a part of any state, as specified in the Constitution. However, DC explicitly got some electors in the 23rd amendment, so they can vote for President.
Really, the idea that the United States might have overseas territories that are not on track to statehood is itself an invention of the twentieth century. (Owing to the 1898 Spanish-American war, which caused the US to take over several parts of the ex-Spanish empire).
Yes, I understand that that’s the reason, but a reason is not the same thing as an excuse.
No, that can’t be right, because half the comments here say it’s due to racism. So if a Puerto Rican moves to a US state, they still can’t vote, right?
No, that can’t be right, because half the comments here say it’s due to racism.
Both those things are true, racists prevent it from becoming a state to prevent it from voting dem.
So if a Puerto Rican moves to a US state, they still can’t vote, right?
They can’t do this directly anymore, so they are just disenfranchised on Puerto Rico.
They can and do
I can just hear those MAGA morons smugly chuckling, “What can they do LOL they can’t even vote, fuck 'em!”
No, fuck you.
I’m wondering what Kimberly Guilfoyle - Don Jrs half Puerto Rican girlfriend thinks about it. I’m sure she’s doing mental gymnastics to justify it.
To be in a relationship with Donny-lite, you would have to be a pretty awful person to begin with. I expect she hates brown people just as much as he does.
deleted by creator
Can American citizens living abroad vote?
Yes, they have a right to vote in the state they last lived in (or, if they never lived in one, perhaps the state their parent last lived in?) but unfortunately Puerto Ricans can’t vote in presidential elections.
Generally yes, but not in Puerto Rico. If they move to the mainland, they can vote for any elections there, but while living in Puerto Rico, they only vote for members of Congress that serve a mostly observational role.
How about someone from new York moving to Puerto Rico vs moving to France?
Unrelated but wow this is strange because I’m a New Yorker who’s lived in PR and moving to France haha.
What the other comment said is accurate though, I could vote absentee in both places, but lose that right in PR if I change my residence - lot of ppl do this for taxes. Afaik I could permanently vote in France as long as I have my US citizenship. Kinda messed up tbh.
But I swear if THIS is the thing that sends Trump’s campaign off the rails hahahaha. I fucking love Puerto Rico and the irony they’d sway as Presidential election is poetic.
Merci pour la réponse, ça m’éclaire sur la situation. That’s messed up situation for Puerto Rican. Think Canada could snatch them off us hands? They could even make Spanish their official language.
They could vote absentee, but eventually they’d lose that right if they stayed in PR.
