Democracy at the American Periphery: Voting Rights in the U.S. Territories By Christopher Cepil Forgotten hardly begins to describe these Americans. They’re the over 4 million people who reside in the last vestiges of the American empire: Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Haven’t heard of them? Forgot they were part of the U.S.? Don’t worry you aren’t alone. On the popular quiz site Sporcle—known for its community of users who are disproportionately knowledgeable of little­known facts—still only about 14% of players could name all five possessions in the “U.S. Territories” quiz. When the Ben Carson campaign released a map of the U.S. last November that incorrectly displayed New England, it was the butt of jokes nationwide. Yet if a map had Puerto Rico shifted 150 miles northeast, as the Carson map had to New England, how many of us would notice? This speaks to much more than just Americans’ ignorance of geography, although that too is a problem. Though they pay most of the taxes state residents do, serve in the U.S. armed forces at among the highest rates, and cross international borders with American passports in hand, territorial residents won’t be voting for president this November. While residents of the territories can vote in the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries thanks to those parties’ internal rules, they are not able to vote in the general presidential election. Territories also receive very limited representation in Congress, with each territory sending one popularly elected “delegate” (Puerto Rico’s is called a resident commissioner) to the House of Representatives and none to the Senate. Delegates have no vote on the House floor and can only participate in committees, otherwise essentially relegated to an observer status in their own legislative branch. American Samoans are even less fairly treated. While residents of the other territories today are given birthright citizenship, American Samoa remains the only place in the world where a person born on American soil is not automatically an American citizen. Despite the very word “American” present in their territory’s name, they’re instead considered “U.S. Nationals.” A group of American Samoans has gone to court arguing that this is unconstitutional. Currently the case, Tuaua v. United States, is awaiting appeal to the Supreme Court after the Obama administration won in lower federal courts. The administration’s defense? A series of Supreme Court cases in 1901, collectively known as the Insular Cases, in which the court ruled the Constitution need not be applied in full in U.S. territories because the residents of the newly acquired Spanish lands were inferior “alien races.” Just five years prior, that same court had upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson the “separate but equal” discrimination in the South. The Insular Cases have played far too strong a role in shaping the rights of the territories over the past century—not just the question of birthright citizenship in American Samoa. The cases make clear the underlying reason the territories have hitherto been neglected: racism. This has no business being a partisan issue. The governors, delegates to Congress, and legislatures of these territories have historically been of all parties: Democrats, Republicans, local parties, and even Independents. No, with territorial populations of over 98% ethnic minorities, this is a civil rights issue. The federal government’s failure to remedy this neglect of democratic principles is certainly not for a lack of options. Admitting the territories into the Union as states seems the most apparent solution, giving them full representation in both Congress and the Electoral College. But it isn’t too simple to add those extra stars onto the flag. The only territory realistically close to statehood at the moment is Puerto Rico. In a 2012 referendum, Puerto Ricans overwhelmingly voted for statehood, yet little has been done about this since. It has also been suggested that Puerto Rico and the nearby U.S. Virgin Islands could be admitted as a single state. This merger of America’s two Caribbean territories would be more populous than nearly half the states—ranking 26th just ahead of Oklahoma and behind Oregon. The Pacific territories could conceivably achieve statehood in a similar fashion, although it could prove more logistically challenging. While Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands are fairly close to one another, American Samoa is much farther away, making the administration of such a state rather difficult. The population of the three territories, too, might discourage support, as all three total only around 270,000 residents. Although several sovereign nations in the world have smaller populations than this, it’s not even half the size of our least populous state Wyoming. There is, of course, the option of independence as well, however all polling in the territories over the years has shown a distinct unwillingness to leave the United States. Statehood and independence aside then, the other way to ensure territorial rights is to amend the Constitution. Ratifying any amendment is a major hurdle, but there is precedent for this. In 1961, the Twenty­Third Amendment was ratified, giving the District of Columbia electors in the Electoral College and thus granting the District’s residents the right to vote in the general election. A similar amendment could be proposed to do exactly that for the territories. A more fundamental change might come in the form of an amendment scrapping the Electoral College altogether in favor of the direct of election of the president. A 2013 Gallup poll found that nearly two­thirds of Americans support this idea. Not only would an amendment like this abolish a political institution Americans have long been grumbling about, it would grant U.S. citizens the right to vote for their commander­in­chief regardless of their residence in a state or territory. While neither of these proposals tackles the issue of territorial representation in Congress, additional clauses of an amendment could address this as well. In today’s increasingly polarizing political climate, however, it may be difficult enough to garner support for a territorial voting rights amendment. Since the Twenty­Third Amendment was ratified, the District has voted blue in every single presidential election. Many Republican officials fear that empowering the territories with full representation would only hand additional seats to the Democrats. Even more than partisan bickering or latent racism, the most dangerous enemy to the U.S. territories remains the obliviousness of the American public to their plight. As cliché as it may sound, one of the most important things we can do is to simply raise awareness of this issue in an effort to generate more bipartisan support. In 1787, James Wilson of Pennsylvania asked on the floor of the Constitutional Convention, “Can we forget for whom we are forming a government? Is it for men or for the imaginary beings called States?” More than two centuries later, we’re apparently still grappling with Wilson’s question.