Adult U.S. citizens generally expect to be able to vote for the President of the United States. If they live in one of the territories belonging to the United States, though, they can’t. A new congressional task force hopes to find a solution to this unfinished piece of U.S. democracy.
U.S. citizens, no matter where they were born, cannot vote in U.S. presidential elections if their official residence is in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, or another territory. They can elect representatives who can vote in committees of the U.S. House of Representatives on which they serve but not in other committees or the full House. They have no representation in the U.S. Senate. They can vote in primary elections but they cannot vote for the Electors who actually elect the president and vice-president even when their territorial government put the candidates on the ballot, as Puerto Rico’s did last year.
This is because the U.S. Constitution only provides for voting representation in the U.S. Congress and in presidential elections for states and the District of Columbia.
Rep. Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat who represents the U.S. Virgin Islands in Congress, and James Moylan, a Republican who represents Guam, have introduced legislation that proposes to establish a new Congressional Task Force on Voting Rights of United States Citizen Residents of Territories of the United States.” The bill would create a 15-member task force composed of members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. The new task force would work with the territorial governments of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
What will the task force do?
Within a year of the establishment of the task force, the task force would be required to produce a report that examines the disenfranchisement of the residents of the territories and how they could be given votes in presidential and congressional elections. The study would include “the economic and societal consequences (through statistical data and other metrics) that come with political disenfranchisement of United States citizens in territories of the United States” and possible solutions to these problems. The task force would also identify obstacles that prevent voting and recommend changes that will result in the opportunity to vote.
After producing the report, the task force would be dissolved.
What are the impediments to territory residents’ voting?
The primary impediment is that the United States does not elect the president by a direct vote of the citizens. When voters in states vote in presidential elections, they actually vote for Electors who are supposed to represent presidential and vice-presidential candidates in the Electoral College, which is a meeting of the Electors from the states and D.C. to actually elect the president and the vice-president.
States have Electors equal to the number of their representatives in Congress: two senators and a number of House of Representatives members based on their populations. DC gets the minimum that a State would get: three. Electors vote and the candidate with the largest number of electoral votes wins. In recent years, the candidate with the largest number of electoral votes has not always been the winner of the popular vote, but that is how voting is done.
Since only states and D.C. have Electors, citizens who do not live in a state have no mechanism for voting in presidential elections. Actually, citizens living abroad can generally vote using absentee ballots from their former states, so this applies only to the territories. There are only two ways territories can change this. One is by becoming a State and the other is through an amendment to the Constitution, as was done for D.C. in presidential elections
As for congressional elections, the Plaskett bill charges the task force with identifying “impediments to full and equal voting representation in the House of Representatives for United States citizens who are residents of territories of the United States.” The answer to this question is answered in the U.S. Constitution: inly states get full representation in Congress. Territories, including Puerto Rico, currently have representatives in the House, but these representatives cannot vote on bills outside of the committees on which they serve. This is true for D.C. as well.
Once again, the problem is territory status. States get congressmen under the U.S. Constitution. Territories get specific kinds of representatives outlined in various acts of Congress. Since the territories are not states, they get the representation Congress decides to give them, not equal representation with states.
U.S. citizens living in the District of Columbia got the right to vote in presidential elections through an amendment to the constitution. They still do not have any U.S. senators or a voting representative in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Would the task force give Puerto Rico the vote?
If the legislation passes and a task force is created, the group would not have the power to grant the vote to residents of U.S. territories. The job of the task force would be to research the issue and propose changes which could result in providing full voting rights to the citizens of all the territories.
Puerto Rico can only get the desired representation by becoming a State or through an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which, unlike a grant of statehood, cannot be made by a law.
For Puerto Rico, since the Island has voted for statehood repeatedly, the easiest way of overcoming the lack of voting rights in the U.S. Government would be to become a state, which only requires a Federal law.
The remaining inhabited territories have never requested statehood, and their populations are much smaller than any state, so statehood might not be a solution for them. A constitutional amendment would be the only way for them to get real voting rights in the U.S. Government.
