US Territories Have A Voice In Congress But No Vote Here's Why

Latest stories US-China relations are driving South Korea's distancing strategy Why is Australia buying used American nuclear submarines? Germany living on yesterday's success

In a series of cases, the Supreme Court distinguished between“incorporated” US territories destined for eventual statehood and“unincorporated” territories not destined for statehood, like Puerto Rico and Guam. Part of the impetus was economics: Congress had applied tariffs to Puerto Rican goods, despite knowing that this would be unconstitutional if Puerto Rico was indeed part of the US. It then tasked the Supreme Court with sorting out the rest.

In turn, the Supreme Court decided these new territories belonged to the US but were not part of it. This meant that 8 million new residents – a contingent nearly equal in size to the black American population at the time – would exist outside the constitution. Chief Justice Melville Fuller, dissenting, warned they would exist“like a disembodied shade, in an intermediate state of ambiguous existence for an indefinite period.”

The exclusion of the territories was explicitly tied to race. Justice Henry Billings Brown, in the opinion of the court, wrote that“if those possessions are inhabited by alien races, differing from us in religion, customs, laws, methods of taxation, and modes of thought, the administration of government and justice according to Anglo-Saxon principles may for a time be impossible.”

Unequal representation

Since 1794, Congress had included nonvoting delegates, generally tasked with representing territories en route to statehood. That changed in 1898.

Members of Congress overwhelmingly opposed statehood for these newly acquired places, in part because the largely nonwhite populations of Puerto Ricans and Filipinos were considered racially and culturally inferior and incapable of fully participating in a democracy.

Representative John Dalzell, a Republican from Pennsylvania, articulated this argument in 1900 on the floor of the House, said“the methods of government prescribed by the principles of Anglican liberty as practiced in the United States would be grotesque in the Philippine Islands and would bring to their people no advantage.”

For territories that would never achieve statehood, Congress designed a new position: the resident commissioner to the United States. At first, the position was more like an ambassador than a member of Congress. The resident commissioner, for example, was not allowed to access the House floor, much less speak on it.

Eventually, the position became almost indistinguishable from that of a territorial delegate, gaining the right to debate but never to vote. Resident commissioners would go on to represent Puerto Rico and the Philippines in Congress.

Today, the resident commissioner is a second-class lawmaker. Like the delegates from the other territories and Washington, the resident commissioner may introduce legislation, serve and vote on committees and speak on the House floor – but a commissioner cannot vote on whether a bill becomes law. Even though Puerto Rico is more populous than over a dozen states, it has just one lawmaker, the resident commissioner.