Puerto Virgo Should Become A State

My opponent appears to have forfeited his opening round. No matter; I shall present my argument, just as I would if he would have posted his.I am a staunch supporter of statehood for Puerto Rico, if they so desire. It is unjust that millions of American citizens are disenfranchised just because they live in a different part of the United States. This extends to all territories. However, my opponent's proposal is problematic and goes about it the wrong way:My main concern revolves around represention. My opponent suggests that the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico be merged, and then admitted as a state. Presumably this is to extend the right of voting to the Virgin Islands as well, which is of every good intention, but simply isn't right. Puerto Rico has an estimated population of nearly 3.7 million people,[1] while the Virgin Islands only have a population of around 106,000.[2] Further, the Virgin Islands racial majority of blacks[2] would instantly become a small racial minority, trumped by the 99% Hispanic majority in Puerto Rico.[1]This would result in an unfortunate thing, because, for whatever the Virgin Islands stand to gain by becoming a state, they would lose representation in both Congress and their own affairs. Assuming the size of the Puerto Rico Legislative Assembly remains the same size (51 House seats and 27 Senate seats), the Virgin Islands would only have about 1 seat (at most) in both houses,[3] because under current math each Senate district represents approximately 137,000 Puerto Ricans and each House district represents roughly 73,000 Puerto Ricans. Further, assuming the new state of Puerto Virgo gets an estimated five House seats, roughly one House seat per 740,000 people, the Virgin Islands would not receive even one full House seat.[4] This is actually a downgrade from the current situation, where they at least have a delegate to Congress who can do basically everything but vote.[5] Even if a seat was attempted to be given to the islands, it would likely be struck down under one man, one vote, which requires seats be divided roughly proportionally to population.[6] In all likelihood, the Virgin Islands would be gerrymandered between the five seats - assuming each seat would have have a proportion of 20,000 Virgin Islanders to every 720,000 Puerto Ricans, that means each seat would only have about 3% of voters being Virgin Islanders.My second argument rests on the will of the people - in every referendum ever made on the subject, a majority of Puerto Rican voters have never supported statehood. Even the recent referendum, which saw a majority of voters reject the status quo, saw only 45% of total voters support statehood in the second round, and to complicate things further a governor from the anti-statehood Popular Democratic Party (PDP) was elected that same election.[7] Simply put, it would be immoral to force statehood - a permanent action - on an island that simply doesn't have a majority support it. My third argument rests on the issue of precedent - when states are admitted, both parties traditionally support admitting two states to avoid changing the political system. Because Puerto Rico would almost certainly support Democrats by some margin, and 3 out of the 5 states that would lose seats to Puerto Rico come from Republican-leaning states,[4] there would need to be an admittance of a Republican-leaning state to balance things out. While there are some ideas, such as Delmarva (merging Southern Delaware, Eastern Maryland and the Eastern Shore of Virginia), Southern California (merging all of SoCal but Los Angeles County), and Jefferson (merging some of NorCal and southern Oregon), none of them are likely to become states as all would involve allowing Republican areas of Democratic states to leave.To conclude, Puerto Virgo should not become a state because it would disenfranchise Virgin Islanders, deny the will of the people, and circumvent precedence.References:1. https://en.wikipedia.org...2. https://en.wikipedia.org...3. https://en.wikipedia.org...4. http://www.chron.com...5. https://en.wikipedia.org...6. https://en.wikipedia.org...7. https://en.wikipedia.org...