Puerto Rico status referendum - June 11

[Dereich]

The leap to accept this referendum is really odd. The timeline as I understand it was this:

The Governor of Puerto Rico scheduled the initial referendum and petitioned the DOJ to gain official recognition of it. The DOJ objected due to the phrasing and the lack of a status-quo option. Though the Governor corrected some of the issues, he declined to go back to the DOJ as he wanted to rush the referendum through before unpopular budget cuts would make him and (possibly) statehood look bad. Objecting to the Governor's political shenanigans, issues with the language in the referendum, and the lack of official legitimacy, the main opposition party decided to cripple the referendum's legitimacy by boycotting. In the vote, despite Puerto Rico regularly having 80% voter participation, only 23% of registered voters participated.

From that I'd say the argument that this referendum was not legitimate was pretty damn strong. Without official DOJ recognition, a large vote for statehood was the only kind of legitimacy this vote would have. The opposition made the perfectly logical decision to deny that legitimacy (as well as protest the dodgy circumstances around the election) by boycotting, a boycott which seems to have been very successful. You don't see many boycotted elections in the 1st world, but you don't really see many attempts to hold dodgy elections in the West either.

I don't think Puerto Rico should be denied statehood or any other option if they legitimately vote for it, but I DO think there's a firm argument to deny statehood based on THIS vote.