The term “commonwealth” can mean different things to different people. When used to describe Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States, it is a constantly evolving term.
“Commonwealth” got a majority of the votes when it was presented as an option in Puerto Rico’s 1967 plebiscite. At the time, it was widely understood to mean an “enhanced commonwealth” with a vast swath of new privileges for Puerto Rico — a discredited idea that has been declared unconstitutional and impractical by all three branches of the federal government.
“Commonwealth” had a narrow plurality in the 1993 plebiscite, but Congress could not act on that vote because the term was again defined in a way that was invalid under the U.S. Constitution.
The “commonwealth” definition on the 1967 ballot was different from the “commonwealth” option presented to the Puerto Rican people in 1993.
In 2011, Congress’s official nonpartisan research resource – the Congressional Research Service (CRS) – made this point clearly in a chart describing Puerto Rico’s plebiscite history by adding footnotes to describe the variations of “commonwealth” options on ballots over the years.
In 2017, the Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that a plebiscite ballot should include a “commonwealth” option. DOJ used the term to represent the island’s current status as a U.S. territory, which, since 2017, has been increasingly viewed as colonial. It is unclear whether the Justice Department would have the same position today, but one piece of the status debate that is certain is that DOJ has never endorsed the expanded “enhanced commonwealth” arrangement. Members of Congress and U.S. Presidents of both major national political parties have been clear over decades that an “enhanced” or “developed” commonwealth has no place on a plebiscite ballot.
Read More: The Two Meanings of “Commonwealth”
