“The people of Puerto Rico have consistently voted for statehood, only to have their express will ignored by Congress, which cannot be bothered to care about the disenfranchisement of more than 3 million American citizens on the island,” Congressman Ritchie Torres (D-NY) wrote yesterday at X.
“The disenfranchisement comes not only from the Republican Party (no surprise there) but also from a paternalistic far left, which believes it alone knows what is best for the people of Puerto Rico. With friends like the far left, who needs enemies?”
When one critic responded, “Puerto Ricans don’t want statehood. Just see this past governors election as one indicator,” Rep. Torres corrected him. “A statehooder won the gubernatorial election,” he wrote, referring to Governor-elect Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon (R-PR). “Of the voters who cast their ballots for status,” he added, “statehood garnered 57% of the vote.”
Another Torres critic complained that “[t]he ruling party took away the status quo option from the vote,” to which the Congressman replied that “[t]he status quo is colonialism, denying equal representation and equal enfranchisement.”
The critic then countered that “[c]ontinuing to be a commonwealth has won many referendums in the past.”
Rep. Torres, who represents a congressional district in the Bronx that is home to more Puerto Ricans than almost any other member of Congress, pushed back on his critic’s claim of “commonwealth’s” popularity and its past success on the ballot by noting that the statehood option won in the past four plebiscite votes: 2012, 2017, 2020 and 2024. After some back and forth, the congressman concluded the conversation by saying, “If you think it is morally acceptable to deprive 3 million American citizens of equal representation in Congress, equal funding from the federal budget, and an equal right to vote in presidential elections, then you and I simply have a different set of values.”
Disenfranchisement?
Torres’s reference to disenfranchisement is poignant. The residents of Puerto Rico are literally disenfranchised because they cannot vote in presidential elections, they have no senators, and they are represented by only one, non-voting Member in the House of Representatives. Puerto Ricans cannot vote for the congressional representatives who make their laws, as other U.S. citizens can.
Puerto Rico’s freedom to hold a plebiscite to consider changing its relationship with the U.S. but its lack of power to implement those results is another way in which Puerto Rico is disenfranchised.
Although a commenter makes the case that “taking away one of the most popular options from the vote which is the status quo” is colonialism, the facts tell a different story. The “status quo,” which is Puerto Rico’s current status as a U.S. territory, is deeply unpopular in Puerto Rico. The option received just .06% of the vote when it was on the ballot in 1998 and 1.3% of the vote when it was up for a vote in 2017.
[A “commonwealth” option had received more votes back in 1967 (60.4%) and 1993 (48.6%), but this “commonwealth” ballot option did not represent the status quo. It was, instead, an aspirational concept to give Puerto Rico more rights while still remaining a U.S. territory, an idea that has been soundly rejected over the years. In fact, Puerto Rico’s powers as a U.S. territory have decreased in recent years under the terms of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA).]
This unpopularity, combined with the increased recognition that Puerto Rico’s current status is colonial and inconsistent with U.S. democratic values, underpins the decision to leave the status quo – sometimes referred to as “commonwealth” – off the ballot in the last two referendum votes.
