Puerto Rico

Well, you just sort of answered your own question there. If they make it in 2013, they'll be able to vote in the 2014 elections.

Well I wasn't sure if they had to wait until a census or something. I thought we don't add house seats though so are we going to have to redistrict early or something?

Most probably. In the interum their currently non voting single representative gets to chime in. I doubt they'd wait another eight years before giving them House members, so it's either redistribute or add seats. (And quite frankly it seems like adding seats would be easier, and PR's population isn't that big.)

And the Senate gains two new seats because two reps for that house no matter what.

I think adding seats is a good idea. That would also mean we'd have to add electoral votes though. 2016 would be an interesting year.

I wonder what will happen to Puerto Rico's six political parties (Puerto Ricans for Puerto Rico Party (PPR), New Progressive Party (PNP), Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), Popular Democratic Party (PPD), Working People's Party (PIP), and the Sovereign Union Movement (MUS)) when Puerto Rico becomes a state.

edited 9th Nov '12 7:23:44 PM by DeviantBraeburn

Some of them will probably be absorbed into the Democrats and Republicans or at least become affiliated with them. They could also give us our first third party candidates in congress but unfortunately that probably won't happen.

Does Puerto Rico's (National? State? Regional? Federal?) government structure mirror the 50 states? And, out of curiosity, do all the states have to have the same structure at state-level?

edited 9th Nov '12 7:32:42 PM by TheBatPencil

Don't know on the first one.

The second is a no but their individual constitutions which determine that stuff do have to be approved by congress so they're usually pretty similar from what I can tell.

Everyone except Nebraska mirrored the federal two house system. And Nebraska started out that way.(They're unicameral now.) I don't know how it is in Puerto Rico, but the states can pretty much change their local governmental structure whenever they want without federal intervention.

Obviously, it would take quite a lot of time in most states to convince all the necessary persons that doing so would be beneficial, but apparently Nebraska did it in around a year. Puerto Rico can do whatever it wants with its personal structure.

Yep, and we're pretty proud of our unicameral. Seriously, why do states even have a house and a senate? At that level, they're redundant.

edited 9th Nov '12 8:14:03 PM by Balmung

Because the state governments are snowclones of the federal one. I think that this happened after the Constitution was ratified, states changed their own governments to fit the federal one. I'ts a bad habit of lawmakers to create ripoffs of the federal goverments with no need and no benefit.

When Alaska and Hawaii became states, seats were added, and then after the next census, Congress apportioned out of the 435 seats that the House had been set to before. I believe it worked similar when other states were added, but Alaska/Hawaii is the one time my memory is sure about.

Also, I think that Puerto Rico has a 'constitution' set up under which they operate, and I only put the word constitution in quotes because Congress could theoretically change it arbitrarily at any time while the island is still a territory instead of a state. Just like DC has a city charter and a city council and mayor but Congress could at any time revert 100% of the governing power over DC to itself instead of meddling with things they don't like from time to time.

I think they should add at least a few seats to the house when Puerto Rico joins. maybe base it off how many they would have from the current system, and add that many seats.

It would add 5 seats to the house.

They have to add new seats to Congress if a new state is admitted. A state's electoral votes must equal its Congressional representation in both houses.

Like I said, the sum is capped at 435, so unless we raise that cap, we might not get 5 seats.

Wouldn't it just be easier to raise the number of seats? Redistributing among the states we have is one thing but adding in another could make it a lot more complicated.

Getting them to simply add in seats means getting both Houses to agree to that.

Anyway, has this motion even gone further than the vote yet?

some political party in Pureto rico has claimed that they protested to vote by getting people to not vote and seem to believe that means everyone that didn't vote is against statehood.

seriously protesting a vote by not participating is absolutely the DUMBEST thing you could do in a true democratic system.

Possibly not. If they knew beforehand that PR would vote for statehood (not impossible, given polling etc), then campaigning for people not to vote allows them to try to claim that everyone who didn't vote is anti-statehood, thus allowing them to artificially boost their numbers. Stubborn, but making the best of a bad job. Also, many referendums are tied to turnout. It wouldn't really a sound basis for a new state if, hypothetically, 54% of a 34% turnout voted yes, for example.

Re: Political parties: that's usually handled on a state-by-state basis. While there's really only two national parties, states can have as many as they want. California, for example, has never had less than five officially recognized parties in my several decades there. And yes, that includes having your party's presidential candidate listed on the official ballot. Even if he (or she) doesn't appear on the ballot in any other state.

If Puerto rico ever becomes a part of the union... flag makers are gonna have a field trip.

edited 18th Jan '13 3:22:35 PM by Baff

I'm partial to this one.◊

Real nice. But a lot of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! will go down, whatever happens to it.

Same here, reminds me of the original 13 star flag.