Round 3: AllSeeingI vs americandingbat - "United States Territories", page

I would like to begin by establishing a consensus of the topic and associated definitions of terms which will be commonly used in the following discussion.

I will be debating FOR allowing citizens of US Territories to have the right to vote in the US Presidential elections.

The US Territories which we should focus on are, of course, only the US Territories which have a regular civilian population and not Territories which are inhabited or frequented by US Military or Contractors.

The Territories up for debate are as follows:
Puerto Rico
2007 POP EST: 3,994,259
Guam:
2009 POP EST: 178,000
United States Virgin Islands:
2007 POP EST: 108,448
Northern Mariana Islands:
2007 POP EST: 86,616
American Samoa:
2009 POP EST: 65,628

Added to together it equals 4,432,591 people.

These people are subject to the taxation of the USA. Example…

Puerto Rico is classified by the U.S. government as an independent taxation authority by mutual agreement with the U.S. Congress by the federal law 48 U.S.C. § 734. Contrary to common misconception, residents of Puerto Rico do pay U.S. federal taxes: import/export taxes, federal commodity taxes, social security taxes, etc. The only exemption is federal income taxes since residents pay federal payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare), as well as Commonwealth of Puerto Rico income taxes. All federal employees, plus those who do business with the federal government, in addition to Puerto Rico-based corporations that intend to send funds to the U.S., and some others also pay federal income taxes.

en.wikipedia.org...

Another contradiction which is relevant is that a Citizen can become President of the USA and yet their own citizens and their self would not be able to vote in that very election !

In addition, an April 2000 CRS report by the Congressional Research Service, asserts that citizens born in Puerto Rico, are legally defined as natural born citizens and are, therefore, also eligible to be elected President, provided they meet qualifications of age and 14 years residence within the United States. According to the CRS report residence in Puerto Rico and U.S. territories and possessions does not qualify as residence within the United States for these purposes.

They are also subject to Selective Service laws.

For each of these US Territories the head of state/president, which is the President of the USA.
…and yet the rights of these citizens are restricted to deny them the right to vote in the elections which choose the leader of the USA and therefore their own head of state/president.

Why? I cannot think of a good reason why.


SOCRATIC QUESTIONS:
#1 : What benefits does the USA or anyone receive in denying these specific Presidential voting rights of the citizens of these US territories?

The topic for this debate is "The United States territories should be allowed to vote in the presidential general election.” I will argue the con side – that it is appropriate that unincorporated territories of the United States are not represented in the Electoral College and thus do not vote in Presidential Elections.

I would like to thank my opponent AllSeeingI for providing some brief information on the Insular Areas for which this question is most relevant: Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa. In this opening I will go into a bit more detail on the history and current status of each of these areas as seems relevant to the issue of participating in the electoral college process.

First though, I would like to point out that the debate is not about whether or not the citizens of these areas should be allowed to vote in U.S. Presidential elections: it is about whether the citizens of U.S. Territories (by which I assume the debate topic author meant specifically the Insular Areas listed) should participate in this process while their current status as unincorporated territories is preserved. This is an especially relevant point for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, where there is a strong movement both locally and within the federal government to reassess its relation to the United States and grant it full incorporation as a State.

The political history of the five inhabited unincorporated Insular Areas is complex – I only have space for the briefest of overviews. I hope however that even this brief overview will make clear the complexities of their legal status.

These areas were all conceded to the United States under varying conditions. Two (Puerto Rico and Guam) were acquired from Spain by treaty following the Spanish-American War. Guam was captured and occupied by Japan for 31 months during World War Two before being recaptured by the U.S. in 1944. The Northern Mariana Islands were captured from Japan (which had been granted them by the League of Nations in 1919) during World War Two. The US Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark during World War One. American Samoa became a U.S. territory in 1900 when the island of Samoa was divided between the Americans and the Germans.

American Samoa is unique among these areas in that it is an “unorganized territory” – although it has self-governance under a 1967 constitution it has not been the subject of an Organic Act in the U.S. Congress delineating its governance. It administers its own immigration policies, requiring for example that travelers from the United States have proof either of employment within American Samoa or proof of continuing travel back to the States or elsewhere.

Although the Insular Areas to not pay federal income tax to the U.S. Treasury, they do receive aid from the federal government. The status of the various territories with regards to customs taxes and tariffs varies. They are subject to federal payroll taxes in the form of Medicare and social security tax; they also pay income tax at federal rates, but Congress mandates that these monies be returned to the territorial government.

Legally, it has been determined that only fundamental Constitutional rights apply by necessity to citizens of these areas (for instance, the First Amendment right to free speech); procedural rights (for instance the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury) have been explicitly extended to residents by Congress.

United States Citizenship was extended to Puerto Rico in 1917, to the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1927, to Guam in 1950 and to the Northern Mariana Islands in 1986. Residents of American Samoa are not U.S. Citizens unless one of their parents is a U.S. Citizen. They are however U.S. Nationals entitled to free and unrestricted travel to and entry into the United States.

Clearly, the status of these areas is problematic. As my opponent pointed out, there are some seemingly absurd legal repercussions; for instance, that a Puerto Rican citizen would be eligible to run for President but not to vote in the presidential election. In this debate, however, we are not tasked with remedying all these problems. We are asked to look specifically at the issue of allowing U.S. citizens and nationals resident in the unincorporated Insular Areas to vote in presidential elections.

But the President of the United States of America is not in fact elected by the citizens of the United States. Rather, the individual states of the Union send representatives to the Electoral College, which in turn decides the election. The structure is deliberately set up this way – it is an important element of the structure of the U.S. as a Union of States. While at first glance it might appear to be a denial of individual rights of U.S. citizens that citizens resident in one of the unincorporated areas do not participate in this process, it is rather a natural difference in the rights and requirements inherent in statehood versus dependency.

I have no Socratic Questions for my opponent at this time, let me however finish by addressing the question posed to me:

SOCRATIC QUESTIONS:
#1 : What benefits does the USA or anyone receive in denying these specific Presidential voting rights of the citizens of these US territories?

I object to how this question is phrased. We must over the course of this debate determine whether citizens of the unincorporated territories have the right to vote in Presidential elections. I cannot answer a question which presumes a right which I am arguing does not exist.

Perhaps the question behind your question is, “who benefits from the fact that citizens of the unincorporated territories do not have the right to vote in the U.S. Presidential elections?” I can think of many answers to this. For one thing, we could look at the question of party politics. Since Puerto Rico is by far the most populous of these areas, I will focus on the numbers there. Suppose Puerto Rico were to become a state: it would have the right to elect 2 senators and as many as 7 representatives (Source), which would presumably be reflected in the presidential elections as 9 electoral college representatives. It is hard however to know whether this would benefit the Democrats or the Republicans more, since the three main Puerto Rican political parties are differentiated by their stance on statehood, independence, or commonwealth status and are all composed of both Republican and Democratic members. Nevertheless, I am sure that both major parties have analysts working hard to determine whether Puerto Rican participation in the electoral college process would benefit them or not.

I applaud my opponent on the ample history report of his last post. However, as far as I can tell he made only one direct attempt to show a reason which would not allow these people to vote in the general presidential election. His reason: it would slightly change the make-up of the Electoral College and/or disrupt the status-quo or benefit one or the other political parties.


I submit that this is an unjust reason to deny a person the ability to vote for who will be the head-of-state/president and therefore the highest leader of their realm.


As my esteemed opponent stated “We are asked to look specifically at the issue of allowing U.S. citizens and nationals resident in the unincorporated Insular Areas to vote in presidential elections.”

The Electoral College is constantly in a state of shift and how would the small number of new electors by adding these Territories make such a dramatic shift that it would be any different than the current ebb-and-flow of population and current slight changes of the Electoral College over time.

But we are not here to debate the system of the Electoral College. Nor are should we make the false assumption that the electoral college is, as you stated: “an important element of the structure of the U.S. as a Union of States.” This fact is highly debatable and opinion on that issue would vary greatly amongst the US citizenry.

I agree we must focus on the issue of whether these people should be allowed to vote for their own head-of-state/president. I would then like to suggest that we are not here to debate the validity or methodology of the current USA electoral process.

We must focus solely on whether it is moral and ethical to impose a head of state/president on these people without allowing them to participate in the election process and to have an equal say in who will be the highest leader of their own domain.



Regarding: my opponent’s Statehood vs dependency argument…
These are titles which are essentially meaningless. I challenge my opponent to show how any of the current 50 states are not dependent on the federal government or other states in some fashion. All states and territories represent a whole of the security structure of the USA; whether it is financial support for the security of our nation through commodities and trade, or strategic military significance to protect the borders and/or movement of military units worldwide by having airbases, installations, and refueling points in such as the far flung area of the USA such as Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, Solomon’s etc.


My opponent has suggested that entering these US Territories into the election would disrupt the status quo and could have negative repercussions for one or the other of the major political parties.
I assert that this is an immoral and unethical reason to ‘Gerrymander’ the US Territories out of the political process to benefit the status-quo or either political party.

To deny them the ability to voice opinion in the form of a vote for their choice of leader which will be their own head of state/president is unethical and immoral regardless of current statehood status or current law. It is true that currently the law is such that these people are not allowed to vote for US President. I suggest that those current laws are unethical and immoral.

I believe my opponent also made indirect suggestions that these US Territories should be withheld from the election process because they were acquired via military action, post-war treaties, or via land purchase agreements.

Each one of these methods of acquisition reflects a similar method of land acquisition which currently exists in the history of regions of the USA which ARE allowed to vote in this process. For example Hawaii, Alaska… every state under the Louisiana Purchase, lands acquired via the Mexican-American War , and reaching back far enough to the original colonies….

Should we, therefore, deny other regions acquired by similar means the ability to vote in the election? Part of Texas from the Mexican-American War?



Yes, one way or another, the current situation of each current US territory reflects a current US State’s own history of acquisition/annexation.

I suggest that it is immoral and unethical to deny a person the right to vote for their own head-of-state/president because a head-of-state/president should never be imposed; if one is imposed it would be immoral and unethical regardless of current status of statehood or whatever title or method is used to describe or segregate the current status of the US States or Territories from one another.

Given that some people under the USA are allowed to vote for US President I suggest it is immoral and unethical to deny or segregate another group based on regional prejudice which says that these people over here can do thus, while these over here cannot.

Other such segregation methods such as racial bias and sexual discrimination have been destroyed because eventually the ignorance which employed those methods were exposed.


Socratic question:
#1: Why then should these lands under the USA be different in the ability to vote for US President than any of the other regions of the USA which were acquired via similar circumstances: (eg. Land-purchase, via war, or post-war treaty agreements)?

Part One: rebuttal

Let the straw men fly!

I will begin this post by addressing a couple of apparent misunderstandings.

AllSeeingI has apparently read my discussion of whether the Democrats or Republicans would benefit from giving the unincorporated territories representation in the Electoral College as in some way indicative of my support for keeping them out on that basis. Nothing could be further from the truth. I was attempting to answer as directly as I possibly could his Socratic Question about who might benefit from excluding them from this process: the first thing that crossed my mind was that one or both of the main political parties might. I personally think it would be wonderful to break the stranglehold the two-party system has on American politics. But giving equal representation to unincorporated territories in the Electoral College is not a valid way to do that, even if we had proof that it could.

Similarly, he seems to have read my discussion of the historical context as an implication that I for some reason think that how a territory was annexed should impact its right to representation in the Electoral College. I do not. I think that (as is the current situation) all states regardless of how they first became associated with the United States should have such representation. The areas we are discussing in this debate are not states and therefore are not represented in the Electoral College, nor should they be until such time as they become states.

I realize that my opening post was heavy on information that may not have seemed directly relevant to the question of voting rights. I felt compelled to provide this information in order to give a sense of context to the debate. I for one knew very little about the Insular Areas, their history, their legal statuses, and the issues involved before I began research for this debate. I do not presume that our readers and judges will have been aware of the complexity, and I believe it is incumbent upon us to give as much information as we can in this limited space. Also, I wished to provide some additional information, since my opponent had specifically used the Puerto Rican case, to demonstrate why it will be insufficient in this debate just to look at one case and assume that it is representative of all.

It is with some relief that I see my opponent agrees with me on one thing:

“[W]e are not here to debate the system of the Electoral College. … we are not here to debate the validity or methodology of the current USA electoral process.”

Given that fact, we must not ignore that methodology. The President of the United States is not voted into office directly by the people of the United States: he is instead elected by the representatives of the states of the Union. I will assume, as my esteemed opponent seems to assume, that the topic of this debate then is properly one of whether or not the unincorporated Insular Areas should hold elections for members to represent them in the Electoral College.

I must disagree with my opponent when he say, “[W]e must focus on the issue of whether these people should be allowed to vote for their own head-of-state/president.”
My opponent would like the focus of this debate to be primarily on the question of whether individuals have the right to vote for President; my aim in sharpening our focus is to point out that that’s a moot point.

We do not vote for President as citizens of the United States. We vote as citizens of our states for representatives who in turn vote for President.

Finally, my opponent seems to have gotten the idea that I object to the procedural hassle of adding electors to the Electoral College. Again, this is not the issue. While I’m not sure how exactly we could apportion a representation for American Samoa (which has only 65,628 residents), I’m sure that an arrangement could be made if it became necessary – if American Samoa became an incorporated State of the Union.

It is not any perceived structural hassles or changes to the Electoral College that I am trying to highlight. If the Insular Areas were all to vote to become states, go through the process of negotiating statehood within their own legislature and within the federal government, and be granted full statehood, then their citizens (like the citizens of any other state) would have the right to elect representatives to the Electoral College.

My opponent has made one truly bizarre assertion in his first reply, in regard to the terms state and dependency: “These are titles which are essentially meaningless.” If he prefers, I will happily stick with the proper title for Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands, which is in fact “Insular Area” or “unincorporated territory”.

To call this distinction meaningless in the context of a debate about one of the legal differences between statehood and status as unincorporated insular area is either disingenuous in the extreme or just uninformed.


Finally, to answer my opponent’s question to me:

Socratic question:
#1: Why then should these lands under the USA be different in the ability to vote for US President than any of the other regions of the USA which were acquired via similar circumstances: (eg. Land-purchase, via war, or post-war treaty agreements)?

These areas are and should be different from the incorporated States because they have not gone through the process of gaining statehood – indeed, in a couple of instances there is no evidence that they have any interest in doing so, and in a couple any interest in doing so seems to be overwhelmed by the desire to maintain the status quo.

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Part Two: Incorporated States and Unincorporated Areas

Article II [of the United States Constitution]

Section 1. The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

Source

Article IV [of the United States Constitution]

Section 3. New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any particular state.

Source

One of the major differences between an incorporated area of the United States (including the fifty states) and an unicorporated area is in how the Constitution applies to it. The Equal Footing Doctrine, while not included in the Constitution itself, has been a part of the Organic Acts for all states added to the Union. Among other things, this prevents the individual states from discriminating against citizens of other states, ensures freedom of travel between the states, and guarantees that new states have the same rights over their territory as other states.

The balance between federal unity and state sovereignty is one of the ongoing themes in American history. Striking an appropriate balance is often difficult, but one of the important mechanisms in this is the electoral process. Originally, the system of electoral representatives was set up in the Constitution as a compromise between those who feared that direct election of the President would lead to a tyranny of the majority and unfair advantage to the most populous areas to the detriment of rural areas and those who feared that having the legislature elect the head of state would open the process to unacceptable corruption and special-interest manipulation.

The equal footing doctrine is often viewed as guaranteeing equal protection under the Constitution, and indeed this is part of it. But it also guarantees equal treatment – that the individual states do not have special status with respect to the federal government.

Clearly, this is of vital importance for our nation. The balance of federal vs state power would be at risk if we allowed territories both all the rights and privileges afforded to the individual states but not the limitations on their sovereignty that the states are subjected to.

I brought up one such example in my opening: American Samoa places strict restrictions on immigration or travel from the incorporated United States. Other unincorporated territories (or at least those in power therein) benefit from lax labor laws which would be impossible in a State in which the full Constitution applied.

In a post-colonial world, the status of the inhabited unincorporated territories does indeed appear anachronistic and undemocratic.

However, we cannot risk our Union by extending rights to try to compensate for colonialism without demanding equal status for these areas. They should be allowed to choose for themselves whether full incorporation with the United States is what they want – to put themselves on the path to statehood and full enfranchisement – or whether they prefer a move towards independence.