[KS] Re: voting rights [was: Koreans in Japan]

[Jason Shaw Parker]

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I agree - but a note of clarification. I was under the impression that 
Puerto Rico was only allowed to participate in Presidential Elections 
(hence their presence and casting of ballots at the RNC and DNC this year). 
Is this correct?

Jason Parker

At 10:05 PM 09/03/2000 -0400, you wrote:
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>One hundred years ago, U.S. troops captured the island of Puerto Rico, along
>with Cuba and the Philippines, in the Spanish-American War. Cuba and the
>Philippines achieved independence, but Puerto Rico's status remained
>unclear, a political football domestically and on the island. The debate
>over self-governance for island residents has been addressed in piecemeal
>fashion and only gained steam in the last half-century.
>
>During WWI, in 1917 fears about German expansion in the Caribbean & Mexico
>(remember Zimmerman Telegram) triggered the U.S. purchase of the Virgin
>Islands from Denmark for $25 million. When residents of the island were
>offered U.S. citizenship, Puerto Rico was included in the deal. World War II
>and the Cold War with the former USSR drove the move in 1952 to establish
>commonwealth status for the island because of concerns again for Caribbean
>security and the Panama Canal.
>
>The result has been a strange status of commonwealth where Puerto Ricans do
>not pay federal taxes and cannot vote in presidential or congressional
>elections. They elect a governor and a non-voting delegate to Congress,
>called a resident commissioner.  Perhaps Korea would have ended up with this
>status in the Empire of Japan.
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "k u s h i b o" <jdh95 at hitel.net>
>To: <korean-studies at iic.edu>
>Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2000 8:32 PM
>Subject: Re: voting rights [was: Koreans in Japan]
>
>
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> > Reply to: kushibo at mac.com
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> >
> > Dr. John Caruso Jr. wrote:
> > > Yes, there are problems of equitable representation
> > > as Wash DC has a pop. of 520,000
> >
> > I have it listed as 620,000 (Washington DC itself, not including the
> > surrounding areas of Virginia and Maryland).
> >
> > > while Wyoming (home of Dick Cheney) has only 480,000
> > > residents and gets two US Senators and one Congressperson.
> >
> > And it had even less when it became a state way back. Does anybody know
>the
> > population threshold for statehood? Guam has only 105,000 residents, which
>I
> > think is below that threshold.
> >
> > DC does now get representation on par with states of similar population in
> > terms of presidential elections. It receives three electoral votes, as if
>it
> > were a state.
> >
> > > Voting is historically a privilege not an inalienable
> > > right and the electoral college further exposes the myth
> > > of majority rule as you mentioned in Hayes v. Tilden.
> >
> > The more I think about it, the more detrimental I consider it to be. It
> > really exacerbates the spoiler effect of a third party candidate, skewing
> > the results in favor of what may be the least popular candidate, and/or
> > forcing many voters to choose a major party candidate they prefer less
> > rather than a third party candidate they feel has no chance.
> >
> > > Spanish is the language of instruction in Puerto Rico....
> > > I wonder how many parallels we could draw between the status
> > > of Puerto Rico and the mainland and Japan and Korea?  Didn't
> > > we annex PR in 1898 and force the residents to
> > > become US citizens in 1917?
> >
> > "Force"? That may be a bit strong of a word, especially if citizenship
>were
> > offered as a concession of some kind.
> >
> > But, yes, definitely some parallels (although the example of the
>Philippines
> > may be a closer parallel; Puerto Rico would be more like America's
>Okinawa,
> > not America's Korea). At any rate, some parallels may be that there was a
> > different language spoken, close geographic proximity of the colony to the
> > colonizer, belated granting of full citizenship, a native separatist
> > movement that included violence against the high-level members of the
> > colonizer's government (there was an assassination attempt by Puerto Rican
> > separatists against Truman in the 1950s), local infrastructure development
> > that was put in place mainly for the colonizer but had peripheral benefits
> > for the local population, drafting of the colonized into the military for
> > battles in foreign lands and waters, and discrimination against the
> > colonized who migrated to the main territory of the colonizer.
> >
> > Differences would be that there was no attempt (to my knowledge) to
>supplant
> > Spanish with English or to dissuade the use of Spanish, no military had to
> > be dismantled nor a national government replaced, the proportional
> > difference between the PR and Mainland US populations was much larger, the
> > proportional difference between the PR and Mainland land masses was much
> > larger, the PR shared cultural aspects with other nearby nations so there
> > wasn't much fear of losing a whole culture, and little administrative
> > attempt was made to force Americanization on the PRans.
> >
> > Off-hand, I can't think of any others.
> >
> > K U S H I B O
> >
> >