Puerto Ricans cannot vote in general elections despite being U.S. citizens, but they can exert a powerful influence with relatives on the mainland. Phones across the island of 3.2 million people were ringing minutes after the speaker derided the U.S. territory Sunday night, and they still buzzed Monday.

Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is competing with Trump to win over Puerto Rican communities in Pennsylvania and other swing states. Shortly after stand-up comic Tony Hinchcliffe said that, “I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Puerto Rican reggaeton superstar Bad Bunny announced he was backing Harris.

After Sunday’s rally, a senior adviser for the Trump campain, Danielle Alvarez, said in a statement that Hinchcliffe’s joke did “not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

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164 points

Puerto Rico needs to be a state already. Washington DC too.

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78 points

What happened “no taxation without representation” that the colonists fought for in the war of independence? Apparently it only applies to white people.

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42 points
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It definitely only did apply to white people. And only men.

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2 points

Landowning white men to be precise.

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9 points

It was a lie from the start, it only ever applied to a few wealthy old white men who didn’t want any cuts to their profit margins after the British fought a costly war to defend them from French and Native retaliation.

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4 points

That’s why they don’t pay federal taxes

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46 points

While they dont pay income taxes to the IRS, they do pay customs taxes, federal commodity taxes, and federal payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment) to the IRS, which sounds alot like federal taxes to me.

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3 points

Same thing that happened to the WMD in Iraq. And the “good of the people” in Guatemala.

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Combine the Carolinas and Dakotas, add DC and Puerto Rico. No flag change.

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45 points

Got it, so North Carokota, South Dakolina, and DC and Puerto Rico. I think it’s a great idea.

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23 points

ok but why does carakota go kinda hard

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34 points
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I was gonna say it’s ridiculous to make DC a state, it’s just a city!

Turns out more people live in DC than Wyoming or Vermont LOL. So I’m down!

Also I’ve heard that monkey’s brains, although popular in Cantonese cuisine, are not often found there.

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12 points

Turns out communism was just a red herring!

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7 points

But it doesn’t have an airport. Or a car dealership. There’s a car dealership a few blocks from the Capitol building, but it doesn’t have one.

(This was an actual argument from the GOP on the floor of Congress.)

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1 point

IIRC if DC became a state, only specific federal buildings, such as the white house, scotus & the capitol buildings would remain as a territory (due to the constitution), but, because of a amendment to the us constitution giving DC the same amount of voters _(members of the electoral college)_for the president as the lowest-representation (essentially always 3), which only citizens living inside the area would be allowed to vote for, only the citizens of white house would be able to vote for 3 whole electors.

I might be incirrect, as I am not a US citizen, but I’ve seen this mentioned somewhere long ago

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21 points

Look man. I know NC is far from perfect, but don’t lump me in with SC okay.

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24 points

If we combined Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming, and both Dakotas into one mega state, they’d have about the population of South Carolina.

But somehow they get 17 electoral votes to SCs 9 and 10 senators to California’s 2.

So I vote for Monomskakota!

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3 points
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But think about all the food down there in SC, y’all can claim it. Maybe they’ll take some of the empathy and intersectional community minded mutual aid networks y’all got and we can all be a little fatter and happier.

Plus, we all get more papusas and salpicon!

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9 points

Add DC, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and we have 53 states. 53 is a prime number, and therefore we would be indivisible.

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But first you should probably fix those islanders that aren’t even citizens.

Iirc making people citizenshipless is even against international law?

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7 points
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Which islanders are you referring to?

People born in Guam, the US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa all have American citizenship (just like Puerto Ricans).

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3 points

Sadly it’s not like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statelessness

Canada, for example, withdraw the citizenship to children of Canadians that haven’t lived at least 1 year in Canada before 18yo

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2 points

Yeah, people can’t have no citizenship.

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8 points

Puerto Rico periodically votes on whether or not to pursue becoming a state, becoming a state doesn’t win except in one vote that was specifically a non-binding vote on the topic and that had much lower turnout than other votes on the idea.

DC was literally created specifically to not be a state, so that no state held the seat of the federal government.

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7 points
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Why does DC need to be separate anyway? Does any other country do it like that?

Edit: yes, a few, but not really any I would look to as role models: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_district

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4 points
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It doesn’t, and the reasons for being that way are long in the past. The originally US wanted to avoid any state having the capitol at a time when states were more independent entities than they are now. People weren’t really meant to live there at all. Politicians and there staff would travel in from the surrounding areas. Of course, it’s evolved way past that, and the citizens of DC deserve the full representation of statehood.

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3 points
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Edit: my information was out of date

Tell the Puerto Ricans that, we’re waiting on them reaching 51% in favor.

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17 points

They reached a majority vote in favor of statehood in the 2020 referendum. We’re waiting on Congress. There’s supposed to be another vote in this general election.

Make them a state, or give them independence. The will of the people of Puerto Rico should decide, but the current status is untenable.

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3 points

they should be a state. if they become independent the US will fuck them over forever.

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