While these delegates do vote for their pledged candidate at their respective convention, this marks the end of the territory's participation in the presidential election.
[4] On October 17, 2006, Pedro Rosselló, a former governor of Puerto Rico, and the Unfinished Business of American Democracy Committee on behalf of the approximately four million U.S. citizens residing in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, presented a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States seeking the Commission's aid in obtaining enfranchisement.
The remaining political organization, the Popular Democratic Party, has officially stated that it favors fixing the remaining "deficits of democracy" that the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations have publicly recognized in writing through reports of the President's Task Force on Puerto Rico's Status.
We now do so again, this time en banc, rejecting as well an adjacent claim: that the failure of the Constitution to grant this vote should be declared a violation of U.S. treaty obligations.
at 6, the majority has chosen to overlook the issues actually before this en banc court as framed by the order of the rehearing panel, see Igartúa de la Rosa v. United States, 404 F.3d 1 (1st Cir.
Instead the majority has sidetracked this appeal into a dead end that is no longer before us: Puerto Rico's lack of electoral college representation, see U.S. Const.
In doing so, the majority fails to give any weight to the fundamental nature of the right to vote, and the legal consequences of this cardinal principal.
I beg to differ, and so, I suspect, do a considerable number of those four million U.S. citizens who, lacking any political recourse, look to the courts of the United States for succor because they are without any other avenue of relief.
Judge Lipez considers the panel bound by this holding in Igartúa III, but he does not express a view of his own on its merit.
He expresses additional views in his concurring opinion.Lipez opened his concurrence opinion as follows:[11] Despite our court's 2005 en banc decision rejecting the right of Puerto Rico's four million residents to vote in presidential elections, the issue of federal voting rights for these longstanding United States citizens remains a compelling legal problem.
The unequal distribution of the fundamental privilege of voting among different categories of citizens is deeply troubling and, not surprisingly, the legal arguments in favor of enfranchising Puerto Rico residents have continued to evolve.
Thus, while I agree with Chief Judge Lynch that our panel must adhere to the precedent set five years ago by the en banc court on the constitutional and treaty interpretation issues addressed in the majority opinion, I cannot agree that the plaintiffs' claims should be dismissed without review by the full court.
Given the magnitude of the issues and Judge Torruella's forceful analysis, this is one of those rare occasions when reconsideration of an en banc ruling is warranted.Torruella opened his Opinion Concurring in Part and Dissenting in Part, as follows:[11] Although in a different format than presented on prior occasions, we once more have before us issues that arise by reason of the political inequality that exists within the body politic of the United States, as regards the four million citizens of this Nation who reside in Puerto Rico.
This is a fundamental constitutional question that will not go away notwithstanding this Court's repeated efforts to suppress these issues.21 We can now add to that dismal list the endeavors of the lead opinion.
These changed conditions have long undermined the foundations of these judge-made rules, which were established in a by-gone era in consonance with the distorted views of that epoch.
Although the unequal treatment of persons because of the color of their skin or other irrelevant reasons, was then the modus operandi of governments, and an accepted practice of societies in general, the continued enforcement of these rules by the courts is today an outdated anachronism, to say the least.
Such actions, particularly by courts of the United States, only serve to tarnish our judicial system as the standard-bearer of the best values to which our Nation aspires.
Allowing these antiquated rules to remain in place, long after the unequal treatment of American citizens has become constitutionally, morally and culturally unacceptable in the rest of our Nation, see Brown v. Bd.
[13] In August 2017, the en banc First Circuit rejected another lawsuit by Igartúa challenging Puerto Rico's exclusion from United States congressional apportionment, over the dissents of Judges Torruella, Kermit Lipez, and Ojetta Rogeriee Thompson.