American colonialism strikes again. It turns out that Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho has received $ 39,000 in donations recently from the U.S. Virgin Islands, double what he received from his own constituents. Why do the U.S. "territories" give so much political cash? Because that's the only way they can influence our political system, lacking voting representation in Congress. It's an outrageous situation, but one that is continually perpetuated. I wrote about it for my very first article in The American Prospect, back in 2000--the story is even worse in Puerto Rico. And nobody ever talks about it.
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Don't forget that Washington DC citizens are in the same postition...taxation without representation.
Unfortunately, giving them votes won't change the fact that money will always be more effective than voting. Each person only has one vote, but they can spend money to lobby based on what they have and how important it is to get their way on an issue.
Voting only decides who gets elected, and that's far too broad and coarse a control to determine the details of what they do while they're in office. Elected officials' only motivation is to do what benefits themselves and their friends the most, without doing anything that would upset enough people to endanger their chances of reelection (unless they think they can get away with it, which obviously many do). And most people don't care enough to keep track of the details of what they're doing.
The residents of the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico just don't have the illusion that they have any political influence from voting.
(BTW, had to remove my scienceblogs.com cookies to post this, due to the bogus error claiming I hadn't entered an email address.)