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> The belief being that Democrats will change voting laws, open borders and amnesty to Dem-leaning immigrants, and possibly even pack the Supreme Court and add DC and Puerto Rico as new states.

I like how the possibility of respecting the 2020 status referendum in Puerto Rico instead of continuing to have the island governed by a national government in which they have no vote is considered on the more extreme end of that list.

> respecting the 2020 status referendum in Puerto Rico

And the 2017 referendum. And the 2012 referendum.

Three referendums in a decade all advocating for statehood ought to be a pretty clear sign that there is desire for statehood...

The 2017 referendum was boycotted by opponents of statehood (for various reasons to do with the wording of the referendum question and the way it tried to slant the options) and had something like 23% turnout, so citing it as an expression of popular will is a bit weird.

The 2012 referendum also had the statehood question effectively boycotted by many people who favored keeping the current status, because selecting "keep the current status" wasn't an option on that question (it was a separate question altogether, where it got 46% of the overall vote). So statehood got something like 61% of the votes of people who voted on the statehood-specific question at all, but only ~46% of the votes cast in the referendum; representing that as a "yes for statehood" is also pretty weird, since that's about the same number of votes that "keep the current status" got, with the remainder presumably favoring one of the other "more-independence" options.

2020 is different and new: it's the first Puerto Rico referendum I have seen where there was a sanely worded "state: yes or no?" question that actually got a majority voting for the "state" option (52.5% or so), with something resembling sane turnout (~55%).

So yes, respecting this is probably a good idea. "Respecting" the 2012 or 2017 results by making Puerto Rico a state would not have made any sense.

Edit: Now that I have read https://senado.pr.gov/Legislations/ps1467-20.pdf page 31 lines 6-15, which define the "no" answer to mean a specific course of action which is not just "don't become a state", I am less happy with this referendum. Now we have to guess at how many people knew what the "no" was defined to mean and voted for what they perceived as the lesser of two evils based on that....

I sort of agree that the 2012 and 2017 referendums were procedurally deficient and don't clearly indicate a preference for statehood, but they are sufficient to indicate that Congress should at least seriously consider the prospect, pending Puerto Rico confirming it in a further referendum (which they did in 2020).

I agree, in a world in which Congress actually performs its constitutional and moral duties (including little things like writing legislation, instead of just delegating more power to the executive branch). I wish we lived in that world...

> 2020 is different and new: it's the first Puerto Rico referendum I have seen where there was a sanely worded "state: yes or no?" question

As I understand it in this referendum "yes" referred to "become a state" while "no" referred to "become independent", with no option for "keep the status quo".

The best thing to do would probably a referendum with a ranked/approval voting between all three options.

> I understand it in this referendum “yes” referred to “become a state” while “no” referred to “become independent”, with no option for “keep the status quo”.

You understand incorrectly. The question asked was:

“Should Puerto Rico be admitted immediately into the Union as a State? ( ) Yes ( ) No”

It's a little weird, now that I looked into this more deeply, because while that's what the referendum question said on the ballot, the law that put it there is https://senado.pr.gov/Legislations/ps1467-20.pdf and defines the "yes" and "no" answers to have the following meanings, respectively (page 31, lines 6-15, translation from Spanish mine):

- Yes: I demand that the Federal Government immediately recognize the equality of my rights and responsibilities as an American citizen with statehood in permanent union with all the states of the Union.

- No: I reject permanent union with statehood and demand that the Federal Government immediately recognize the sovereignty of Puerto Rico separate from the United States of America with a "Treaty of Independence in Free Association" or with "Total Independence".

Notably, that excludes the status quo as an option. The part right after that says:

  In case the statehood "No" ends up as the majority choice, you must
  immediately start a process of transition to recognize the sovereignty
  of Puerto Rico separate from the United States of America with a
  "Treaty of Independence in Free Association" or with "Total
  Independence", following the description in this law.

What I don't know is to what extent people actually attached those meanings to the choices and hence whether it affected the vote at all, but defining the "Yes" and "No" answers to that question to have those specific meanings is a bit underhanded and quite unfortunate.

underhanded and quite unfortunate.

Sadly, this doesn't seem to be uncommon. In one city-level referendum I am personally familiar with, both sides of the referendum submitted an argument to be put into the election materials. The "Yes" side (loosen a safety regulation) drastically misrepresented the status quo, implying that there was no safety regulation to begin with, and that their referendum would create it. But in reality, the "Yes" vote would loosen an existing regulation.

52% is nowhere near large enough majority for a decision that can never be reverted under any circumstance short of war.

It's not really Puerto Rico's decision, of course; the referendum is non-binding. It's Congress's decision, in the end, though officially adding Puerto Rico as a state against the wishes of a _majority_ of its citizens would be quite the odd thing to do, hence the referenda to see where things stand.

> 52% is nowhere near large enough majority for a decision that can never be reverted under any circumstance short of war.

How small of a minority should be granted the power to deny the majority a say in their own national government?

The answer varies. For example, in the US, depending on what you are trying to accomplish it ranges somewhere among "half of the population", "that one guy at the FCC who writes the policy", and "1/3 of either house of Congress or 1/4 of the state legislatures", right?

I would say the more relevant consideration is whether the existing American states want Puerto Rico to formally join the Union.

Puerto Rico may want statehood, but Turkey also wants to join the EU. In both cases the decision lies in DC or Brussels, not San Juan or Ankara. Puerto Rico may be a protectorate, but I don't think that formally entitles them to Union membership. That being said, if the US refuses to grant them statehood, they should be free to seek sovereignty as an independent nation.

All that aside, my rough estimate is that 90% of the Continental US interest in PR statehood is motivated by political calculus in the Senate and Electoral College. If PR was a red state instead of solid blue, I'd sincerely doubt you'd see statehood regularly discussed at the top of /r/politics.

I think that the difference is that Puerto Rico is subject to US laws but Turkey is not subject to EU laws.

> I would say the more relevant consideration is whether the existing American states want Puerto Rico to formally join the Union.

That's obviously legally dispositive, insofar as those states representatives are who votes in Congress and we are discussing a potential action of the incoming Congressional majority.

> Puerto Rico may want statehood, but Turkey also wants to join the EU.

Turkey, wasn't incorporated into the EU by conquest and then denied voting participation in Union decisionmaking.

> All that aside, my rough estimate is that 90% of the Continental US interest in PR statehood is motivated by political calculus in the Senate and Electoral College.

Probably the majority, at any rate, is political calculus (not just partisan, but also on specific policy issues; and not just the Senate/EC, as the House isn't insignificant.)

But that's always been the case with the causes for (and against) new states. (And why “continental US”, do you really think Hawai’i is an exception here?)

> All that aside, my rough estimate is that 90% of the Continental US interest in PR statehood is motivated by political calculus in the Senate and Electoral College. If PR was a red state instead of solid blue, I'd sincerely doubt you'd see statehood regularly discussed at the top of /r/politics.

Probably, but that's also been the case for basically every state ever admitted to the union. Remember when the US used to consider whether a state was slave for free before admission?

Even the statehood of Hawaii was politically charged. People genuinely feared the kind of people Hawaiian would send as representatives. Including, but not limited to Communists and anti-segregationists.

Alaska was opposed on the grounds that it would be a welfare state and that it would add a bunch of democrats to Congress.

> and add DC and Puerto Rico as new states

Is there a good argument against this? Apart from “but my side will lose power”.

For DC, there's an arguments about a state being able to hold the federal government hostage, which is the reason why a federal district that is not part of any start was specified.

Given that the existence of the federal district is part of the Constitution, it's arguable that making DC a state requires a constitutional amendment.

The proposals I heard would keep the district but make it much smaller, creating the new state (where the majority of people live) around it; the theory being that the constitution only requires a district not to exceed a 10 mile square. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Admission_Act

The wrinkle I see in that proposal: who selects rump-DC's electors?

That’s an interesting question, and the 23rd amendment does throw a wrench in the works. There would probably still be a small number of residents, but it’s harder to justify three electoral votes.

Wouldn't it make more sense for the adjacent states to annex the now unallocated territory rather than create a tiny 50 sq. mile state which, without the important federal buildings, has less practical sovereignty than a fairly large suburb?

VA got all of its land back with the retrocession 173 years ago. MD doesn't particularly want DC back because of internal state politics reasons.

This sounds like we're halfway done, and just need to do the other half then. If Maryland doesn't want it, perhaps another state does? Hawaii, perhaps?

Only if you're wedded to the idea that DC can't be a state for some other reason.

You're 100% the way there if you're fine with DC becoming a state.

It just beta the same question: why don't you want DC to be a state? Because it takes power away from your side?

The administrative region with the nation's capital in it gets preferential treatment, pretty much universally across countries and times. DC sort of gets the opposite treatment, though, which is good from that perspective but sort of sucks for the people living there, since they have limited autonomy. So I'd posit that DC, the territory, should have no residents besides the President himself; the only way I get that without forcing seven hundred thousand people to move is to change ownership of the land to some state that wants it.

The same reason it doesn't make sense to make Denver or Seattle a state; stripped of the important Federal buildings DC has literally nothing remarkable going on about it. States need actual land and resources and all that other stuff such that you could vaguely see them operating as an actual nation. As it is it'll just end up being bullied by all the other states

Just avoid the border gore and force Maryland to take the extra land, tax income, and voting population; it'll probably be enough to knock them up a House representative or two anyway.

So Rhode Island shouldn't be a state? Wyoming? What are your requirements for being a State? Should NY or CA be 2 states? Why not?

States aren't allowed to secede, per Lincoln, so operating as a nation is irrelevant. (Texas is special.)

The original US required every state to have access to the ocean, so Colorado and Kansas shouldn't be states.

This is a remarkable statement, because more people live in DC than in Wyoming or Vermont, and the purpose of a state is to serve its people, not its buildings or "resources".

It’s poorly worded in the comment you are replying to but “make DC residents citizens of Maryland and Virginia instead of adding a state” is a cogent argument with lots of merit.

Of course those 2 senate seats that would certainly be Democratic make this a political non-starter.

There are federations whose capital is part of a state or a state itself. Did this problem occur anywhere in practice?

That's an interesting question.

In doing some research to formulate an answer, it really is quite striking that the US Constitution is the first of its kind, in that it conceives of a federation of co-equal sovereign states combined under a federal sovereign state. The Federalist Papers explicitly compare the proposed model against the then-existing models of Germany (i.e., Holy Roman Empire), Poland, Switzerland, Netherlands, and then-US. Keep in mind that none of those countries retain their same government form today.

In the Federalist Papers, the Netherlands is explicitly singled out for the problem of the domination of one state (Holland) over all the others, although my understanding of their history is that the state started out that way, so it's not a problem caused by the capital being part of Holland's territory. There are other examples I can think of single-state-dominant confederations (Germany provides a few examples!), but again, I'm hard-pressed to attribute any cause of that to the actual location of the capital.

At the end of the day, I don't think it would be a problem today. However, a lot of that also derives from having 200+ years of case law and custom firmly cementing the roles of federal and constituent state in a federal republic. In 1787, when the Constitution was written, that custom and precedent doesn't exist. When you're arguing that a federal government needs its own locus of power, independent of state authority, and a lot of people fear giving it that power, giving it a territory where no state can reasonably claim to be able to exercise state authority goes a long way to letting that locus of power be truly established.

DC bill will pass house soon. I think it should be the #2 priority of the senate after COVID/economy. Puerto Rico is less of an obvious one and not nearly as popular on the island as DC residents

>Currently you see many conservatives repeating the meme that losing the Senate means a Republican will never win the White House again. The belief being that Democrats will change voting laws, open borders and amnesty to Dem-leaning immigrants, and possibly even pack the Supreme Court and add DC and Puerto Rico as new states.

It is an open secret that they will do all of these things given the opportunity. There's probably one or two D senators in the way of that right now.

It's not a secret at all. Several democratic senators are in favor of Puerto Rico statehood. (As is the territory of Puerto Rico, but putting that aside...) Several democratic senators are in favor of immigration amnesty, usually in the form of "squatter's rights" or DREAM. Several democratic senators are in favor of less-restrictive immigration policies, essentially to reduce illegal immigration by making legal immigration easier and at capacity: Legalizing the status quo, in other words. These are all defensible policy positions on their own merits.

I'm too cynical to believe that these aren't favored in part because they would help their chances are re-election, but it's also not necessary, as a republican government and a majority of republican state legislatures could not stop the entire federal government flipping democrat.

I want to understand you correctly. Do you believe that but for one or two Democratic Senators, all of these things would transpire?

Yes I do.

1. The democratic platform endorses "restructuring" (packing) of the lower courts.

2. A large number of democrats including Kamala Harris have endorsed court packing or other schemes to change the balance of the supreme court. Joe Biden refused to tell the american public what he thinks about court packing. He later promised to create a commission to study court packing.

3. Chuck Schumer has made it a priority to eliminate the legislative filibuster so they can pass laws with 51 votes instead of 60.

4. Democrats believe the senate unfairly benefits republicans. They want to make D.C. and Puerto Rico into states to give them an advantage. Some democrats want to make states out of every american territory. This would lock republicans out of the senate permanently.

They will do all of these things given the opportunity. Republicans are already pretty fucked due to demographic change, but democrats very openly want a one party state.

https://reason.com/volokh/2020/09/19/regardless-of-what-trum...

I don’t see the court restructuring point in the platform, but I just read the table of contents. Can you help me find it?

https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/202...

Also, my question wasn’t whether you believe that’s what the Democrats want. Of course the Democrats want it to be a one party state. Everyone wants their side to win.

My question was whether you believe if Joe Manchin was more liberal (for example) that by 2020 we would have two more states, a packed judiciary, etc. Because that is GP’s point. That this election is not an existential threat to either party.

https://reason.com/volokh/2020/08/20/does-the-democratic-pla...

>My question was whether you believe if Joe Manchin was more liberal (for example) that by 2020 we would have two more states, a packed judiciary, etc.

It's a simple matter of whether they have the votes to do it. All they need is a simple majority to accomplish all of the things I listed. You said it yourself - everybody wants to have a one party state, right? So who, besides Joe Manchin and perhaps Kyrsten Sinema stands in the way of adding new states, abolishing the filibuster, packing the courts, or any other part of the democrat agenda?

There are no shortage of voices for these things. Where are the voices against them?

If Joe Biden, who is supposed to be some kind of moderate, can't tell the American public whether he's for or against packing the supreme court, what does that say about the state of the democratic party?

This uhh packing the courts thing. Isn't it what mcconnel has already done by denying all of Obama's appoints and delaying them so that they could be trump appointments instead? Especially given the odd appoints trump made like folks who'd never talked in a court before

It's highly unlikely that the US becomes a one party state, but instead, the politics of the two parties changes. The most obvious change being that the republicans stop being the party of racists? They can easily draw more votes from minority conservatives if they drop the racism

Packing the court means specifically to expand the size of the court and fill it with partisan judges. Some people have been trying to redefine the term recently in order to create a false equivalency between what republicans have done and what democrats want to do.

>The most obvious change being that the republicans stop being the party of racists?

Democrats are the party of anti-white and anti-asian racists.

Preferring majority rule over minority rule is not "one-party". Republicans could win elections by appealing to voters instead of jerrymandering.

>Republicans could win elections by appealing to voters instead of jerrymandering.

Republicans are very popular. Maybe not quite as popular as the Democrats. Does that give the Democrats a license to take over the federal government? I don't think so. And it wouldn't matter how many votes the democrats get, all people have a right to self determination first and foremost. Living as a permanent political minority is tyranny.

What a patently absurd statement, especially if you consider our national history. We didn't live in a strong two-party existence until relatively recently and we still have (not enough) independent members in congress.

Political parties were quite literally decried by the founders and as we have now almost completely been polarized in a two-party system we have reached this level of disfunction.

This is unacceptable and both parties have been responsible for shutting out third-party candidates.

All people are subject to the rule of law of the land, whether you think it is just or unjust. You have the right to vote for whoever you want but you don't have a right to do whatever you want. Democrats haven't taken over the federal government. They were voted into office, just as several republicans/whigs/federalists/anti-federalists/literally whoever.

This is the process. This is the reality. This is America.

Choosing to reject both the facts and reality doesn't change this.

>All people are subject to the rule of law of the land, whether you think it is just or unjust. You have the right to vote for whoever you want but you don't have a right to do whatever you want. Democrats haven't taken over the federal government. They were voted into office, just as several republicans/whigs/federalists/anti-federalists/literally whoever.

When I talking about democrats taking over the federal government, I am talking about court packing, senate packing (by adding states), and other tactics to establish they will use to establish a permanent majority. I am not talking about the recent election.

The person I replied to seems to think that all those things are justified because the democrats are more popular than the republicans.

I have no idea what you are talking about with regard to political parties or choosing to reject facts. I assume you didn't actually read the thread so you took what I said out of context.

Not only have those things not happened but you are the one choosing that they are wrong for your own agenda. There has been no court packing and while you may choose to believe that Puerto Rico doesn’t deserve statehood for partisan reasons i and many other reject that idea. I am not taking what you’ve said outside of context. You are quite clearly advocating not just against the rule of law but also against the democratic process. Good luck.

>Not only have those things not happened but you are the one choosing that they are wrong for your own agenda.

All of these things are pure partisan powergrabs - and many democratic commentators aren't shy about it either.

> You are quite clearly advocating not just against the rule of law but also against the democratic process.

You are quite clearly immersed in the state cult and our "sacred democracy", ignoring keep ideas like balance of power that our nation was built on.

Actually it's not a pure partisan powergrab to give statehood to Puerto Rico, a territory that is more populated with American Citizens than several states (18 I believe). These people are our people and they deserve to have a voice in congress exactly as much as you or I do. This shouldn't be controversial.

As for the cult comment, the visible cult is quite literally the group who is incapable of accepting reality and I'm not going bother trying to engage with someone who is incapable of engaging in reality.

> Does that give the Democrats a license to take over the federal government? I don't think so.

Yes, it literally does.

Both Democrat and Republican Parties have consistently agreed that it does, via the constitution and law-setting, even where it is against the best interests of most people.

You can't make this argument against Democrats, unless you are making it against the Republicans in 2017-2019. Neither of the two political parties are as yet a permanent minority.

If that does happen, such that the Democrats start to consistently get 2/3 of the vote or 2/3 of each chamber (which doesn't look likely), then the dominating Democrats will likely split into two parties.

The choice of electoral system entrenches a two-party state; but, it doesn't say that one of those two parties necessarily has to be the Republicans.

They lack the consent of the governed to make sweeping chances to our government disenfranchising 70 million+ people.

I'm not a Democrat but I'm probably a liberal and I think it'd be swell to abolish the Senate entirely.

It's not like we would really end up with a one party Democratic state, to begin with the party isn't cohesive enough for that to be terribly meaningful, and then you'd also get explicit divisions around issues, not more and more agreement.

(abolishing the Senate would make the Federal government a lot spicier, but the Senate is much more sclerotic and ossified than it is staid)