Can Puerto Rico Vote in the Presidential Election
Puerto Ricans Fight for Correct to Vote
B O S T O N, Oct. five, 2000 -- The United States sought today to deny Puerto Rico's 2.4 meg registered U.S. voters their newly awarded right to cast ballots in theupcoming presidential election.
"The Republic [of Puerto Rico] is not a country. … Thecitizens of Puerto Rico practice not have the constitutional right to vote for the president and vice president of the Usa," Department of Justice attorney Matthew Collette argued before the 1st U.S. Circuit Courtroom of Appeals in Boston.
The federal authorities is seeking to accept thrown out an Baronial ruling past U.South. Commune Judge Jaime Pieras that found Puerto Rico residents were illegally denied the correct to vote in presidential elections.
"Merely citizens of communist Cuba and the American citizens of Puerto Rico cannot vote" for their national leaders in this hemisphere, attorney Gregorio Igartua de la Rosa, the pb plaintiff, told the three-guess panel.
Residents of the self-governing Caribbean democracy are U.S. citizens, just do not pay U.Southward. income taxes. They tin vote in the island'southward presidential principal, only not in the November. 7 presidential election.
The commonwealth joined Igartua, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of himself and other citizens of Puerto Rico, every bit an intervening party.
Puerto Rico'south Solicitor General Gustavo Gelpi argued the fundamental right to vote was based "non on territory, but on citizenship."
The U.South. Constitution, he noted, had been expanded in the 19th and 20th centuries to permit blacks and women the right to vote. Originally merely white male person property owners who paid taxes could vote.
Puerto Rico Prepares for November. seven
But the federal authorities argued Puerto Rico, which became part of the United States in 1898 when Spain surrendered it, had two methods of gaining the vote for its citizenship: become a country or follow the same path as the District ofColumbia and have a constitutional amendment passed.
Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Rossello told reporters outside the court that "those are two procedures; this could exist athird."
Meanwhile the Spanish-speaking island is going ahead with preparations to vote.
"Nosotros, nether state law, volition agree the presidential ballot … and nosotros volition get to whatever forum nosotros accept to get to to brand certain that those votes are counted," Rossello said, adding Puerto Rico would have eight Electoral College votes — more than than 25 other states.
The proponents of Puerto Rico's right to vote in the presidential election said they would press their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=122776&page=1
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