A historic day for Puerto Rico, says Pierluisi
The last one was not enough: Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi says another plebiscite is coming for Puerto Rico.
Shortly after the White House released the 2014 budget, Pierluisi—Puerto Rico’s sole representative in Congress, and who is for statehood—announced that it includes the allotment of $2.5 million to go towards a new plebiscite to vote on the island’s territorial status.
“Today is a historic day for all of us that fight for equality and justice for Puerto Rico,” Pierluisi said in a statement. “The White House recognizes that in Nov. 06 the majority of American citizens in Puerto Rico revoked their consent to continue with the current territorial status because it denies the residents of Puerto Rico fundamental rights of democracy.”
A similar plebiscite took place just last November, and the option of statehood won. However, some have brought the result into question.
While the option of statehood won with 834,191 votes, almost half a million voters—498,604, to be precise—left that question blank. That seemed to be in line with what the Popular Democratic Party (PPD)—which opposes statehood—had asked their followers to do, to protest the plebiscite. On top of those 498,604 blank ballots, 454,768 voted for Puerto Rico to become a sovereign free state, while 74,895 voters went for independence.
Read more: http://www.voxxi.com/obama-new-plebiscite-status-puerto-rico/#ixzz2Q6oKCjCk
Well I guess we will finally get our opportunity to select whether we want to become a state or be independent, as far for what we saw in the last elections 54% voted they wanted to change the actual status. in a second question they answered 61 % wanted to become a state. The opposition is claiming over 500,00 thousands ballots who did not answer, And this was due to the belief that if they answer twice they could loose the ballot. In other words the process was confusing to those people, if they would had known that it was possible they would had voted statehood, giving statehood around 76%. Of course the local press is like always trying to distort the reality and saying it would had given the opposition of statehood a vast majority, which would be contradicting the first question.
ReplyDelete