Puerto Rico wants say in U.S. vote

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – You’re a U.S. citizen who wants to vote for president? No problem, generally. In the 50 states and the District of Columbia, just register in time and show up Nov. 7. Anywhere else in the world, just use an absentee ballot.

But in Puerto Rico you’d be out of luck. The 4 million residents of this Caribbean U.S. territory – along with a few hundred thousand in a handful of other tiny U.S. overseas holdings – cannot vote for president, even though they are U.S. citizens.

A spirited effort to change that, which won some early successes, was finally snuffed out Thursday.

“It is not logical that an American citizen who lives in China can vote for president and vice president, and we here cannot,” complained local lawmaker Kenneth McClintock after the decision. “We will not lose hope that American citizens here will be able to vote for president and vice president.

The effort – led by supporters of U.S. statehood for the island – attracted attention to the unusual status of Puerto Rico and energized advocates of changing it, whether toward statehood or independence.

“It’s a problem and a headache, awkward and embarrassing,” said Jeffrey Farrow, President Clinton’s adviser on Puerto Rico. The U.S. territories “are the only places in which a U.S. citizen can’t vote (for president) … and 92 percent live in Puerto Rico.”

Under the commonwealth created in 1952, the 4 million islanders are U.S. citizens who don’t pay federal taxes but receive some $13 billion in federal funds, serve in the U.S. military but have only a non-voting delegate to Congress. Puerto Rican and U.S. flags flutter side-by-side in a rigorously maintained balance of identity.

Although “statehooders” have governed here for eight years, statehood was edged out by the status quo in non-binding referendums in 1993 and 1998; independence lagged far behind.

Clinton’s administration supports holding yet another status referendum – which commonwealth supporters, weary of the never-ending challenges, tend to oppose.

“They should have the option and be able to choose a status in which they vote for the individuals who make and implement their laws,” Farrow said – a clear allusion to statehood or independence. At the same time, he added, in any future referendum “it’s our position that Puerto Rico should have the current arrangement available to them.”

In considering the presidential vote, the courts in recent months have been less circumspect in calling for change.

It began when a group of statehood advocates sought a declaratory judgment from the federal court in San Juan. U.S. District Court Judge Jaime Pieras ruled that Puerto Ricans should have the presidential vote, calling the present state of affairs “unconstitutional and unconscionable” “a form of slavery.”

A month later, Pieras ordered the Puerto Rico government to hold such a vote.

It remained unclear how such votes would be made to count within the Electoral College system, so many people condemned the idea as a sham and mere “beauty contest.”

Nevertheless, ballots were printed. It appeared the statehood advocates were hoping to shame the United States into backing their cause by presenting millions of votes to an Electoral College that won’t consider them.

The U.S. Justice department challenged Puerto Rico’s plans in Boston’s 1st Circuit Court of Appeals – and won last month. The court ruled that for Puerto Ricans to vote, the island must either become a state or the U.S. Constitution must be amended as was done to give D.C. residents the presidential vote in 1961.

But the Boston court added its voice to the chorus of critics.
Chief Judge Juan R. Torruella attacked the U.S. government’s “national disenfranchisement” of its citizens in Puerto Rico. “The perpetuation of this colonial condition runs against the very principles upon which this nation was founded,” he wrote.

The court tossed the issue back to Puerto Rico, where on Thursday the local Supreme Court ordered the government to stop plans for the vote.

The State Elections Commission had already spent about $1 million on preparations and printing 3.1 million ballots bearing photographs of George W. Bush and Al Gore.

To allow the vote “would be to promote an electoral fallacy of colossal proportions and would perpetuate a fiction that has at its center a vote that is not permitted by the constitution of the United States,” the judges wrote.

They also called a vote a form of propaganda by advocates of statehood.

“This was a mechanism for (statehooders) to try to push statehood through the back door,” said Independence Party leader Ruben Berrios.