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U.S. Government disenfranchisement of U.S. citizens residing in Puerto Rico
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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 choose electors in U.S. presidential elections or elect voting members of the U.S. Congress.
Perceptions of disenfranchisement in Puerto Rico
U.S. citizens born in Puerto Rico or any U.S. citizen who resides in Puerto Rico (be it a Puerto Rican or not) are effectively disenfranchised since they lose their right to vote for the President of the United States or to vote for any voting-member of the Senate or House of Representatives at the national level. This is despite the U.S. Government Executive and Legislative Branches holding ultimate sovereignty over all U.S. Citizens and the territory of Puerto Rico. Moreover, U.S. citizens residing in Puerto Rico are not counted in the U.S. Census as part of the estimates it provides of the U.S. population. 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 William Jefferson Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations have publicly recognized in writing through Presidential Task Force Reports.
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 a democracy due to U.S. Government disenfranchisement of U.S. citizens residing in Puerto Rico.
That 1985 case has subsequently been re-filed several times. The appeals court decision in 2005, on appeal of the decision in the third filing of the case, reads in part:
Judges Campbell and Lipez concurred in the decision. Judge Torruella dissented, opening his dissent as follows:
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