Voting rights in Puerto Rico

Voting rights in Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is an insular area — a United States territory that is neither a part of one of the fifty states nor a part of the District of Columbia, the nation's federal district. Insular areas, such as Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam, are not allowed to choose electors in U.S. presidential elections or elect voting members of the U.S. Congress. This grows out of Article one and Article two of the the United States constitution, which specifically mandate that electors are to be chosen by "the People of the several States". In 1961, the 23rd amendment to the constitution extended the right to choose electors to the District of Columbia.

Perceptions of disenfranchisement in Puerto Rico

Any U.S. citizen who resides in Puerto Rico (whether a Puerto Rican or not) is effectively disenfranchised at the national level. Although the Republican Party and Democratic Party chapters in Puerto Rico have selected voting delegates to the national nominating conventions participating on U.S. Presidential Primaries or Caucuses, U.S. citizens not residing in one of the 50 States or in the District of Columbia may not vote in Federal elections.

Both the Puerto Rican Independence Party and the New Progressive Party outright reject the status quo that permits disfranchisement (from their distinct respective positions on the ideal enfranchised status for the island-nation of Puerto Rico). The remaining political organization, the Popular Democratic Party, is less active in its opposition of this case of disfranchisement but has officially stated that it favors fixing the remaining "deficits of democracy" that the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations have publicly recognized in writing through Presidential Task Force Reports. [ [http://www.house.gov/fortuno/pdf/PuertoRicoBooklet.pdf" Report By the President's Task Force On Puerto Rico's Status (December 2005)"] ] [ [http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/documents/2007-report-by-the-president-task-force-on-puerto-rico-status.pdf"Report By the President's Task Force On Puerto Rico's Status (December 2007)"] ]

Various scholars (including a prominent U.S. judge in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit) conclude that the U.S. national-electoral process is not fully democratic due to U.S. Government disenfranchisement of U.S. citizens residing in Puerto Rico. [Torruella, Juan R. (1985).Citation
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=xDhWAAAACAAJ&dq=The+Supreme+Court+and+Puerto+Rico:+The+Doctrine+of+Separate+and+Unequal&ei=mGcBR5G7EpuOpwKe0PDEAw
title=The Supreme Court and Puerto Rico: The Doctrine of Separate and Unequal
first=Juan R.
last=Torruella
publisher=University of Puerto Rico Press
year=1985
isbn=084773031X
] [cite web
url=http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/citizen01.htm
title=Puerto Rico and a Constitutional Right to vote
author=José D. Román
publisher=University of Dayton
accessdate=2007-10-02
(excerpted from: José D. Román, Trying to Fit an Oval Shaped Island into a Square Constitution: Arguments for Puerto Rican Statehood, 29 Fordham Urban Law Journal 1681-1713, 1697-1713 (April, 2002) (316 Footnotes Omitted))
]

The appeals court decision in 2005, on appeal of the decision in the third filing of the case, reads in part:cite web
url=http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=1st&navby=case&no=042186v3
title=De La Rosa et al. vs. United States
author=Boudin, Chief Judge
publisher=Findlaw, quoting the decision by the Appeals Court of the First Circuit
accessdate=2007-10-02
]

Quotation
August 3, 2005
OPINION EN BANC
Boudin, Chief Judge. This case brings before this court the third in a series of law suits by Gregorio Igartúa, a U.S. citizen resident in Puerto Rico, claiming the constitutional right to vote quadrennially for President and Vice President of the United States. Panels of this court have rejected such claims on all three occasions. We now do so again, this time en banc, rejecting as well an adjacent claim: that the failure of the Constitution to grant this vote should be declared a violation of U.S. treaty obligations.
The constitutional claim is readily answered. Voting for President and Vice President of the United States is governed neither by rhetoric nor intuitive values but by a provision of the Constitution. This provision does not confer the franchise on "U.S. citizens" but on "Electors" who are to be "appoint [ed] " by each "State," in "such Manner" as the state legislature may direct, equal to the number of Senators and Representatives to whom the state is entitled. U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 2; see also id. amend. XII.

Judges Campbell and Lipez concurred in the decision. Judge Torruella dissented, opening his dissent as follows:

Quotation
In its haste to "put [plaintiffs-appellants'] constitutional claim fully at rest," maj. op. at 6, the majority has chosen to overlook the issues actually before this en banc court as framed by the order of the rehearing panel, see Igartúa de la Rosa v. United States, 404 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2005) (order granting panel rehearing), which panel the en banc court suppressed, but whose order was adopted as establishing the parameters of the issues to be decided by the en banc court. See Igartúa de la Rosa v. United States, 407 F.3d 30, 31 (1st Cir. 2005) (converting to en banc review panel rehearing in which "the parties [are] to address two issues: first, the plaintiffs' claim that the United States was in default of its treaty obligations and, second, the availability of declaratory judgment concerning the government's compliance with any such obligations."). It is these issues that the parties were asked to brief. Instead the majority has sidetracked this appeal into a dead end that is no longer before us: Puerto Rico's lack of electoral college representation, see U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 2, and our lack of authority to order any constitutional change to such status by reason of that constitutional impediment.
In doing so, the majority fails to give any weight to the fundamental nature of the right to vote, and the legal consequences of this cardinal principal. Under the combined guise of alleged political question doctrine, its admitted desire to avoid "embarrassment" to the United States, and its pious lecturing on what it deems to be the nature of the judicial function, the majority seeks to avoid what I believe is its paramount duty over and above these stated goals: to do justice to the civil rights of the four million United States citizens who reside in Puerto Rico. The majority labels this duty with despect as "rhetoric" and "intuitive values." Maj. op. at 3. I beg to differ, and so, I suspect, do a considerable number of those four million U.S. citizens who, lacking any political recourse, look to the courts of the United States for succor because they are without any other avenue of relief. See United States v. Carolene Prods. Co., 304 U.S. 144, 152 n.4 (1938) (" [P] rejudice against discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities and . . . may call for correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry.").

References


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Puerto Rico — This article is about the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. For other uses, see Puerto Rico (disambiguation). Commonwealth of Puerto Rico Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico …   Wikipedia

  • Political status of Puerto Rico — Puerto Rican Status Referenda have been held four times to determine the political status of the island of Puerto Rico in relation to the United States of America. Since the establishment of the current Commonwealth status in 1952, further… …   Wikipedia

  • Politics of Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico, officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es. Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico ), still treated by the U.S. Congress as one of the last remaining colonies in the world, [ Trias Monge, Jose; Puerto Rico: Trials of the Oldest… …   Wikipedia

  • District of Columbia voting rights — Satellite view of the District of Columbia in relation to the states of Maryland and Virginia. Voting rights of citizens in the District of Columbia differ from those of United States citizens in each of the fifty states. District of Columbia… …   Wikipedia

  • Puerto Rico — Puerto Rican. /pwer teuh ree koh, pwer toh, pawr teuh, pohr /; Sp. /pwerdd taw rddee kaw/ an island in the central West Indies: a commonwealth associated with the U.S. 3,196,520; 3435 sq. mi. (8895 sq. km). Cap.: San Juan. Formerly (until 1932),… …   Universalium

  • List of Puerto Rico-related articles — The following is a list of topics about the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. NOTOC compactTOC4 0–9*51st state (hypothetical) *65th Infantry Regiment (United States)A*Aeromed *Aerovias Nacionales de Puerto Rico *African immigration to Puerto Rico… …   Wikipedia

  • Constitution of Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico This article is part of the series: Politics and government of Puerto Rico …   Wikipedia

  • Puerto Rico — <p></p> <p></p> Introduction ::Puerto Rico <p></p> Background: <p></p> Populated for centuries by aboriginal peoples, the island was claimed by the Spanish Crown in 1493 following Christopher… …   The World Factbook

  • Outline of Puerto Rico — …   Wikipedia

  • History of Puerto Rico — 1903 Map of Puerto Rico The history of Puerto Rico began with the settlement of the archipelago of Puerto Rico by the Ortoiroid people between 3000 and 2000 BC. Other tribes, such as the Saladoid and Arawak Indians, populated the island between… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”