Gov. Pedro Pierluisi: ‘Puerto Rico will be the first truly Hispanic state’

[hollodero]

(03-07-2021, 02:11 PM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: There was a pretty big article done about a decade back about the statehood movement in Puerto Rico.  There's a lot more going on there than simple statehood vs. the status quo, and percentages for and percentages against.

The situation is incredibly complicated, and it would take an actual resident to give it it's proper context.  I'm trying to see if I can find it, because it has plenty of quotes from actual Puerto Ricans that explain the issue.  But in the meantime, this kind of explains what I'm talking about:

On November 6, 2012, eligible voters in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico were presented with two questions:
(1) whether they agreed to continue with Puerto Rico's territorial status and (2) to indicate the political status they preferred from three possibilities: statehood, independence, or a sovereign nation in free association with the United States.[23] Voters who chose "No" to the first question numbered 970,910 (54.0%), expressing themselves against continuing the current political status, while those who voted "Yes" numbered 828,077 (46.0%), indicating their desire to continue the current political status relationship. Of those who answered the second question, 834,191 (61.2%) chose statehood, 454,768 (33.3%) chose free association, and 74,895 (5.5%) chose independence.[4][5]

Breaking down simply...

Only 46% of votes were in support of the Puerto Rico territory status, while 54% were not.  For the "nots" there is a second question, of which you prefer, and of those 61% chose statehood, thus winning out.

There have been a lot of complaints from those who are anti-statehood that it's not fair that the 54% now represents for "statehood" when in actuality it's much lower.

Although the previous two referendums (November 2012 and June 2017) also had ostensibly pro-statehood outcomes, the New York Times described them as "marred, with ballot language phrased to favor the party in office".[3] For example, the fourth referendum, held in November 2012, asked voters (1) whether they wanted to maintain the current political status of Puerto Rico and, if not, (2) which alternative status they prefer. Of the fifty-four percent (54.0%) who voted "No" on maintaining the status quo, 61.11% chose statehood, 33.34% chose free association, and 5.55% chose independence.[4][5][6][7] Opponents of statehood argued that these results did not show that a majority of Puerto Rican voters support statehood. The June 2017 referendum was, according to the New York Times, a "flawed election" where the turnout was only 23% because most statehood opponents sat out. 97% of votes cast favored statehood.[3]

Now, I believe the most current results are a simply yes or no, but I haven't read enough to really know all the details.  I'm simply sharing this for those that think Puerto Rico should have been a state decades ago.  It's not that simple, even as recently as 2017.

I'm not unsympathetic to the argument that this issue and determining the will of the people is a bit more complicated as portrayed. I figure it is. And I also figure that those referendums of '12 and '17 had several issues and posed questions in a way that they can not be seen as any clear-cut expression of voter will.

The 2020 referendum, however, was different, and it asked one simple question: Should Puerto Rico be admitted immediately into the Union as a state?

And while one might still say that well this is still a real complicated issue - so was Brexit. Where people were asked "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?", a simple enough question it was broken down to. And the result was close enough, 51,9% vs. 48,1%. But that was it. No one argued afterwards that "hey this is actually all real complex and this is a really close margin and in light of all that we rather go with the losing option and don't change things..." - Nope, the will of the people was clear and undoubted and that was that. As it should be.
Of course the Puerto Rico referendum was non-binding and that needs recognition. It was, however, a clear injunction to have a binding one - if that is feasible, which it might not be.


- May I ask why you, as far as I can tell, are at least tentatively against Puerto Rico statehood?