On November 10, several registered voters in Illinois who have moved to Guam filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Chicago, arguing that they should be permitted to vote in 2016 via absentee ballot. If they had moved to a foreign country, they would be permitted to continue to vote via absentee ballot in Illinois elections. But because they moved to Guam, they can’t vote. See this story. The case is Luis Segovia v Board of Election Commissioners for the City of Chicago, n.d., 1:15cv-10196. The case is assigned to Judge Joan Gottschall. It is based on the 14th Amendment.
With all the PR about divisive lawsuits, pluarlists forget about working together with the whole.
Not so with the 9th USA Parliamemt. We’ve been attracting team players for more than twenty years and pur United Coalition is a team of voters and candidates synchronized, working, voting and thinking as one
Everone loves being part of the USA, Republic of Earth foreign and International Parliaments.
Dear James, this lawsuit is filed on behalf of U.S. adult citizens who are not permitted to vote. One would think if you are going to comment about this, your comment would be relevant to that serious deprivation of voting rights.
They are not residents of the United States (plural).
The easiest solution is for the people of guam to choose statehood. I actually possible that the people of guam will choose statehood sooner than those of puerto rico. Support for statehood in Puerto Rico has been largely the same over the past few years, while its slowly but steadily seems to be rising in guam.
@Will: The problem is that Guam doesn’t have the population that would seem to merit it being a state. Puerto Rico has a population of 3.5 million, higher than that of 22 states. Guam’s population is only about 160,000, which is less than 1/3 of the population of the least populous state, Wyoming.
In the 1860 census Nevada only had 6,857 residents, but it was admitted to the Union in 1864. Even as recently as 1950, Nevada only had a population of 160,983.
There is no population threshold for a territory to be admitted as a state. The Northwest Ordinence of 1787 provided that any potential state seeking admission carved from Northwest Territory have a population of 60,000 to be admitted. This ordinance appears to have been limited in scope to the land area constituting the Northwest Territory, and as such would not apply to other territories. Also of note, under the articles of confederation, the Land ordinence of 1784 provided that new states have a minimum population of 20,000.
@Richard and Will: I’m not saying that there is a legally required minimum population to form a state, because I agree that there isn’t currently such a law.
But politically, in 2015, it would be difficult to get approval of a new state with such a small population relative to the other states. Would it be popular among the senators and representatives from other states to give 2 senators and a representative to Guam?
Will, actually the 1787 law waived the 60,000 population requirement if certain other criteria were met. I would never have known that except earlier today I was reading an article about it.
Joshua: If the people of Guam overwelmingly requested statehood, i severely doubt that a majority of congress would object to their admission. Another possibility that is occasionally discussed is the merger of Guam with the Northern Marianas and the resulting polity’s admission as a state, some of Guam’s governors have supported such a policy though support for the idea rather lacking in the Northern Marianas.
The admission of Nevada as a State was during the Civil War, and after the discover of the Comstock Lode in 1959. The main interest was to keep Nevada in the Union (the original boundary of the State continued the Missouri Compromise line across the southern tip. It also permitted Congress to take the area from Utah, which actually did have a significant population in 1860.
Nevada was recognized as a mistake, and it part of the 1870s reapportionment bill to deny statehood to a territory whose population was less than the quota.