The citizens of Puerto Rico are set to decide whether or not to change their political status on November 6, 2012:
To be honest, I am not too familiar with Puerto Rican history or its over-100 year-old relationship with the US. So I have some questions:
What is the likelihood of the first part of the referendum passing? Which of the second part is most likely to pass? By extension, what is the likelihood of it passing the US House, then Senate, then the big man?
How might these possible outcomes be (dis)advantageous for both sides? What would it mean for the average citizen of both nations?
How is answering “yes” on the first question different from answering “nationhood in free association with the US”? I had read when they first proposed this, (at least a year ago?) that that option wasn’t in the second part. If you vote “yes” on the first, two of the other options don’t make sense. Unless that means a different non-state, non-country status, the nuances of which I am unaware of.
It is my understanding that the statehood movement has grown since the last election.
What are the politics like in PR? If they do end up becoming a state, what types of Senators/Representatives would they send to Congress? (Don’t answer “Puerto Rican ones” please.)
I know Latinos heavily favor the Dems, but would PR follow that?
It looks to me that “Nationhood in free association with the US” means something like what we now have with the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau, which is the status of “Associated state”. The Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau are all formally sovereign states; they are members of the United Nations and have diplomatic relations with the United States and with other countries. (All three of these countries were part of the old Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, which the U.S. administered as a U.N. Trust Territory after World War II.) However, after gaining formal independence, these countries made agreements with the United States in which the U.S. continues to provide for the defense of the islands and also makes certain financial provisions to support them. However, they aren’t territories (not even territories with the autonomous “commonwealth” status currently held by the Northern Mariana Islands, which was the other part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, as well as by Puerto Rico). They are foreign countries with a very close alliance-type relationship with the United States.
So the questions would be:
Do you want Puerto Rico to continue as a autonomous dependent territory (“commonwealth”) of the United States?
If Puerto Rico stops being an autonomous dependent territory, would you prefer it become
a.) a state of the United States
b.) an independent country
c.) an independent country but one with a very close special relationship with the United States.
That makes sense to me. My impression is that previous votes had pretty small support for outright indepedence, but failed to clarify what the second choice of those voting for continued commonwealth status is. In other words, for supporters of continued commonwealth status, do they see Puerto Rico as a special part of “America”, with its own unique culture and hence special political status; or do they see Puerto Rico as a different country–not part of “America”–that has chosen to enter into a special dependent relationship with the United States of America?
**New Progressive Party (NPP) **(Favors Statehood)
**Popular Democratic Party (PDP) **(Favors “enhancement” of the current Commonwealth) Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) (Their support has consistently been around 3%)
The two largest parties NPP and PDP both have democratic and republican sides. The Governor and the Resident Commissioner are both members of the NPP, but, the Governor is a member of the Republican Party while the Resident Commissioner is a member of the Democratic Party.
Politics in Puerto Rico is mostly divided by the status question. I think it’s hard to say how the people would vote.
Maybe analogous to Northern Ireland in the past and now? The Nationalist/Catholic parties happen to be on the left of the spectrum, and the Unionist/Protestant parties are right (except for one, the PUP, but it’s tiny). However, a man could be a devoted leftist, but vote DUP or UUP, because he is a Presbyterian. And for many people, the status of NI trumps left/right politics.
It seems that there are a higher percentage of Puerto Rican Republicans than other Latino ethnicity, save Cubans. Not to be cynical, but the US Republican party has said as recently as 2008 “We support the right of the United States citizens of Puerto Rico to be admitted to the Union as a fully sovereign state after they freely so determine.” If they knew that admitting PR would mean a whole bunch of new voting Democrats, they might feel otherwise. A reason often given for some Republicans’ refusal to consider admitting Washington DC as a state.
Who decided the format of the ballot questions? Because with the way that the ballot is set up, it looks like someone’s pushing their thumbs on the scales pretty firmly towards statehood: You could have nearly 50% favoring the status quo, and only slightly more than 1/6 favoring statehood, yet still get statehood out of this.
Hm, you’re right. The situation is even more skewed than I thought at first glance, since it could result in statehood without it being anyone’s first choice. Suppose we had an electorate where 34% liked the status quo, but if they couldn’t get that, would take statehood instead, and 15% liked the status quo, but would take nationhood in full association as a second choice, and 18% have nationhood in full association as their first choice, and another 33% want full-on, no-strings-attached independence. In this situation, the plurality want to keep the status quo, and over two thirds want something fairly similar to the status quo, but statehood would still win.
The fundamental problem here is that by making the first question “Do you want to keep the status quo?”, you’re lumping together people on extreme opposite ends of the question: Those who want a closer relationship with the US, and those who want less of a relationship.
I don’t see that that’s necessarily weighted toward statehood. That’s just a quirk of the way the voting is set up. Adjusting your scenario slightly, if 33% wanted the status quo but would take statehood and 16% wanted the status quo but would take nationhood in full association, you’d get nationhood in full association.
You’d need to demonstrate how the questions favor statehood to a statistically improbable degree, rather than just constructing a situation in which it becomes the winning choice in a counter-intuitive way. I mean, the US electoral college is set up such that a candidate can become President without winning the popular vote, but that doesn’t mean the college has its thumb on the scale for that particular candidate.
Heck, are there even any other possible scenarios that counter-intuitively favor statehood other than 51% for not keeping the status quo and 34% for statehood?
OTOH, I recall reading in on of these PR-related threads a couple of years ago that PR is a welfare-dependent economic basket case, and its people would starve without massive U.S. subsidies, and that’s why independence is not more appealing politically than it is. No cite for that. Does anybody know if it’s true?
While, at the same time, statehood is not appealing as it might be, because under their present status, Puerto Ricans – that is, residents of Puerto Rico – pay no federal income tax. Is that true?
The weird wording of the ballot question is actually from the US Congressional legislation creating the vote. IIRC, Congress thought the second question would only be asked by a second plebisite if people answered the first question in the affirmative, but the PR gov’t apparently decided to ask both questions in one go.
They’d definitely replace Mississippi on most metrics as our “crappiest state” if they were granted statehood. They’re significantly better off by the standards of other Caribbean countries, but not so much compared to the US.
One of the ideas promoted a couple of decades ago was to admit both Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia simultaneously (or within a year or so of each other.)
This was supposed to balance the tables between the two major political parties.
Pffft. I say if we have to add even one more star, that amounts to critical mass, and at that point we should simply discard the one-star-per-state tradition and go back to the original ring of 13 stars. 13 stripes, 13 stars.
A few possibilities. The first looks fine and isn’t a big change. I’m not sure if I like the other two. I believe people have worked out a 52 star, 53, etc. design.
You’re correct, the original proposal was for the first question to be asked on a plebiscite this month. If the majority had said no, then the second question would’ve be asked on the November ballot.
Are you talking about the White House Task Force report? IIRC, the bill proposed in Congress a couple years ago died after passing the House.
I think the flag design will look more like the current layout than the ones that form a shape with the stars. I don’t see a point where we’d have enough states to depart from the one star per state tradition.
It seems this comes up every several years. Unless things have changed radically, I don’t see it passing. Of course, Newt Gingrich told them that they need to speak English to join the union. And that English was the language of prosperity and Spanish was the language of the ghetto. Maybe old Newt can run to be the first governor.
