No, residents of Puerto Rico cannot vote for president

During a rally for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Oct. 27, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made a racist remark about Puerto Rico. 

“I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Hinchcliffe said. He later made lewd and racist comments about Latinos, as well as Jewish and Black people. 

Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, said during a Monday morning appearance on Fox News that Hinchcliffe made a joke “in poor taste,” and his comments do not reflect the views of Trump or his campaign.

In response to the racist comments at Trump’s rally, some people, including Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, called on Puerto Ricans to vote in the presidential election.

Searches about whether residents of Puerto Rico can vote for president also spiked on Google after the rally.

THE QUESTION

Can residents of Puerto Rico vote for president?

THE SOURCES

• National Archives
• Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution
• USA.gov
• Pew Research Center
• U.S. Census data
• PR51st, a website created by the Puerto Rico Statehood Council (PRSC)

THE ANSWER

No, residents of Puerto Rico cannot vote for president. 

WHAT WE FOUND

Residents of Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens, but they cannot vote in presidential general elections. That’s because U.S. territories, which also include Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands, are not represented in the Electoral College, the National Archives says.

The Electoral College decides who will be elected president and vice president. Each state gets as many electors as it has members in Congress and Washington, D.C. gets three, which adds up to 538 total electors. A presidential candidate needs at least 270 electoral votes to win the election. 

Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution says that only states can appoint electors. The exception is Washington, D.C., whose residents have only been able to vote in presidential elections under the 23rd Amendment since 1964, according to the National Archives. 

That means residents of Puerto Rico or any other U.S. territories cannot vote for president – unless they move to one of the 50 states or D.C.

Nearly 6 million people with Puerto Rican ancestry – or almost double the population of Puerto Rico itself – live in the United States, according to estimates from the Pew Research Center.

Census data show nearly one million Puerto Ricans live in one of seven swing states.

Though residents of Puerto Rico can’t vote directly in presidential elections, they still weigh in on who’s running for the nation’s highest office.

According to the National Archives, residents of U.S. territories can vote in primary elections that political parties use to select presidential candidates for the general election. They can also send delegates to represent their territory at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.

Residents of Puerto Rico can also vote symbolically for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in the presidential general election. These votes are only used to gauge public opinion, as a website created by the Puerto Rico Statehood Council explains.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This story is also available in Spanish / Lee este artículo también en español: No, los residentes de Puerto Rico no pueden votar en las elecciones presidenciales