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.
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. A congressional task force may find a solution to this unfinished piece of U.S. democracy.
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 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. rather, each state selects electors who take the opinion of their state to the meeting of the Electoral College. Each state gets a certain number of electors, and the candidate who wins the largest number of electors 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 it is only states that have electors, people who do not live in a state have no mechanism for voting in presidential elections.
As for congressional elections, the 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 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.
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 what Congress decides to give them, not equality 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.
Will the task force give Puerto Rico the vote?
If the legislation passes and a task force is created, the group would not have the right to grant to 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. Congress would then need to make the required changes.
For Puerto Rico, since the Island has voted for statehood repeatedly, one direct way to resolve the denial of voting rights would be admit the territory as a state. The remaining inhabited territories have never requested statehood, and their populations are much smaller, so this might not be a solution for them. A constitutional amendment such as the one that gave D.C. the vote might help, though it doesn’t provide voting rights in the House. The task force may come up with new and different ideas.
In any case, it will be up to Congress to put ideas into action.
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