Americans in Puerto Rico can't vote for US president. Their anger at Trump is shaping the race
Americans in Puerto Rico can't vote for US president. Their anger at Trump is shaping the race
Residents say a speaker calling Puerto Rico garbage before a packed Donald Trump rally in New York was the latest humiliation for an island territory that has long suffered from mistreatment.
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.”
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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.
What a shit system
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.
Oh in that case they're just paying the "working a job" fee. Next we should have a "using land" fee, problem solved!
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.
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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.
one more reason why the popular vote would be better than the shitshow this is
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