Over the weekend a handful of Puerto Rican voters bothered to show up at the polls and voted overwhelmingly for statehood. CNN reports:
(CNN)Puerto Ricans who voted for US statehood in a non-binding referendum Sunday are “claiming our equal rights as American citizens,” Puerto Rico’s governor says.
Ninety-seven percent of the votes favored statehood but voter participation was just 23% after opposition parties called for a boycott of what they called a “rigged” process in part over the ballot language.
Congress, the only body that can approve new states, will ultimately decide whether the status of the US commonwealth changes.
“It will be up to this new generation of Puerto Ricans to demand and claim in Washington the end of the current improper colonial relationship, and begin a transition process to fully incorporate Puerto Rico as the next state of the Union,” Governor Ricardo Rosselló of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party said in a statement Sunday.
This is obviously kabuki. Some of the Puerto Rican people are still hoping that the mainland will bail them out and if they make nice it will make it more likely. The rest know it’s not going to happen.
As a state Puerto Rico would make an uncomfortable fit. Most of its people are primarily Spanish-speaking. While its per capita GDP isn’t bad, its income inequality is such that the reality of life there is of a handful of wealthy and a lot of very poor people. Its Gini coefficient is much higher than that of any of the states. It’s more like Colombia than it is like Mississippi.
As I note in my OTB post on this referendum, the turnout for this referendum was lower than any of the referenda that have been held in the past fifty years, including the one in 1967 when the island’s population was significantly smaller than it is today.
That, combined with the fact that admitting P.R. would benefit Democrats and the financial and cultural issues you cite, will be sufficient reason for Congress to ignore this vote just as it has largely ignored the previous four.
A few rich people have all of the money? A lot of people speak Spanish?
Texas 2.0
Steve
steve, there’s really no comparison between Puerto Rico and Texas. Consider:
One of these things is not like the others. Hint: it’s Texas. For comparison California’s percentage of native Spanish speakers is lower than Texas and its Gini coefficient is higher.