Reuters: Puerto Ricans to vote on U.S. territorial status

[nonniey]

Republicans won't just vote for a new Democratic seat- which is what PR would be. So they would add another seat, say in UTAH to balance giving DC a seat.

Why do you say Puerto Rico would be a Democratic seat?

[DCSaints_fan]

Gbear basically talked about the response that I would give, which is that this situation is unlike wet dry vote where the option is wet or dry, and if wet then how wet (e.g. how later are stores open, can grocery stores sell hard liquor etc). That is, some people can be united against an idea, but for polar opposite reasons. That's kind of what happened here. The reason it is different than your analogy is because the "other" options (of which statehood was one) did not have much in common. Some of the options, independence and free association would have decreased the entanglement with the US while other options would have greatly increased entanglement (like statehood). If on the other hand the Other options were all something that increased entanglement then I would say the wet/dry analogy would be apt, but again the Other options were so dissimilar that the analogy doesnt fit.

IMO this was a pretty clear attempt by the ballot designers to skew the vote. And they were pretty successful at it.

Why don't they just have all three options (statehood, independence, or remain territory (status quo)) on the same ballot, the voters can rank their order of preference (first/second/third) and the winner can be determined using instant runoff voting?

[88Comrade2000]

Why do you say Puerto Rico would be a Democratic seat?

Want to test that. If this were to be for real, the stakes would be immense and the Dems would make sure any new seats would be Dem.

Frankly, despite the usual 6 year itch; 2014 is looking to me like a big Dem year. Alot of those people elected in 2010 are going to be thrown out.