Puerto Rico

[Former President tack50]

Write in: Green.

Puerto Rico will presumably not elect politicians from the Democratic or Republican party, but rather their very own local parties (PPD and PNP respectively, though in 2020 there was a huge third party wave which reminds me a bit of Spain 2015).

Presidentially PR will vote for Democrats but it will send essencially 4 independents to the House of Representatives and 2 independents to the Senate.

[Former President tack50]

Write in: Green.

Puerto Rico will presumably not elect politicians from the Democratic or Republican party, but rather their very own local parties (PPD and PNP respectively, though in 2020 there was a huge third party wave which reminds me a bit of Spain 2015).

Presidentially PR will vote for Democrats but it will send essencially 4 independents to the House of Representatives and 2 independents to the Senate.

Well fyi members of those parties do also cross-register with Democrats and Republicans, so presumably they would be elected on both parties but then caucus with the party they identify with federally.

Fair enough, but I think that the party leaderships from Dems and Republicans will have a much lower impact on the PR congressmen than on everyone else.

[Former President tack50]

I dunno, I suspect a lot of Puerto Ricans will still want some sort of autonomous status even after statehood, which is why I'm a lot more lukewarm/cautious about it than other red avatars. Public opinion seems to be about 50-50 (ok, 52-48) on it, and opponents of statehood feel that way for a reason.

Puerto Rico is the kind of situation which really calls for a Greenland/Aland Islands type solution with significant local autonomy while still being tied to the US state. Something along the lines of US citizenship and federal representation but a lot more power in their finances, laws, etc. Hard to see how that would work given the present derangement of the GOP but that seems the most logical option.

Given that the big desire for PR statehood tends to come from the fact that they have no representation, wouldn't a simple solution be to simply give them representation via constitutional amendment?

It doesn't even need to be full representation they could get say, 1 Senator (as opposed to 2) and half of whichever many House representatives they'd be entitled to.