Where I was swiftly reminded of what everyone outside of Puerto Rico I've ever met ever has said when I bring up Puerto Rico's voting status: "Yeah, but they don't pay taxes, right?" And it's only just recently struck me that it is very odd that we consider that to be an acceptable trade-off: would you give up your right to vote in exchange for not having to pay taxes? Would you silence your political voice if it saved you money? I'm seriously asking, because given the record low voter turn-out last November, I have to suspect that at least some people would.
Maybe the assumption here is that by not paying taxes, they have no real stake in the U.S., and therefore shouldn't get to vote. There are of course a couple troubling things with that statement: for starters, it implies that those who don't pay taxes don't count. That may seem like an uncontroversial statement to make for some folks, until one remembers how many people are too poor to pay taxes. Like me, for example; I'm actually getting a tax return for the first time since I returned to grad school.
Now, I'm sure there are those who sincerely believe that those who don't work shouldn't vote--but even bracketing off the severe problematics of that statement (does that mean an acceptable way to disenfranchise voters is to lay people off if you don't like how they vote? Now that's a patronage system--more reminiscent of a third-world republic--that I do not want to live in!), is the simple fact that I do work. In fact, I perform the single most essential service of the University: educating the actual students. Perhaps the real question is why, for doing such essential work, am I being paid too little to pay taxes?
But now I've already digressed too far from my original topic of Puerto Rico--which is also a common characteristic of most Puerto Rican discussions I've been in (although that perhaps also indicates that Puerto Rico is tied into far larger and relevant questions about America and our current economic system than we may realize). Because here's the other problem with the taxes-for-votes argument about the island: many Puerto Ricans do give to their country, in the form of U.S. military service. That is, they literally serve their country. "But military service is voluntary!" countered one of my students. Which is also a curious bit of logic: does that mean if you chose to serve in the military, then you definitely don't get to vote? I don't think anyone defends that.
I've increasingly begun to question whether the whole vote-or-taxes debate isn't just smoke and screens for the real problem here, one we've never let ourselves truly look in the eye: that U.S. citizens living on U.S. territory were never granted the right to vote in the first place.
For also curiously absent from the whole Puerto Rican question is an assumption of self-determinacy among Puerto Ricans: do they want to be a state or independent? They have voted several times about it, and have proven to be just as internally divided on that issue as the U.S. is about, well, just about everything else--but that still has not deprived us of the right to vote. Yet I think I can count on one hand the number of conversations I've had solely about Puerto Rican self-determination, not about the whole supposed votes-vs-taxes "trade-off," as though there should even be a trade-off. Many mainland Americans, on both the right and the left, seem to proceed off of the assumption that taxes and votes is a question of balance that we get to decide for Puerto Ricans, not let them decide for themselves.
One could here still counter that the whole problem here is that Puerto Rico as a whole still has not decided--as previously mentioned, they have voted numerous times on statehood vs. independence, and have been evenly divided. Again, bracketing off for now the fact that all of America is evenly divided and that still has not stopped us from voting, is the fact that perhaps allowing the territory to vote might in fact expedite the whole process; once P.R. stares down the barrel of full citizenship rights, with all duties and responsibilities therein pertaining, might be the moment when they finally choose for themselves if they even want to be part of this country in the first place.
Maybe they'll be happy to stay here after all; I would be the first to welcome them in (anything to shup up the ridiculous "English-only" nutjobs in this nation). And if they decided to get out, then I would be the first to recommend opening full diplomatic relationships with them. But while I use to wring my hands about Puerto Rican indecisiveness, I've come to realize that U.S. indecisiveness ain't exactly a non-factor in this equation, too; we've long blunted their voices, then are puzzled when they don't express theirs.
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