The 2017 referendum was boycotted by opponents of statehood (for various reasons to do with the wording of the referendum question and the way it tried to slant the options) and had something like 23% turnout, so citing it as an expression of popular will is a bit weird.
The 2012 referendum also had the statehood question effectively boycotted by many people who favored keeping the current status, because selecting "keep the current status" wasn't an option on that question (it was a separate question altogether, where it got 46% of the overall vote). So statehood got something like 61% of the votes of people who voted on the statehood-specific question at all, but only ~46% of the votes cast in the referendum; representing that as a "yes for statehood" is also pretty weird, since that's about the same number of votes that "keep the current status" got, with the remainder presumably favoring one of the other "more-independence" options.
2020 is different and new: it's the first Puerto Rico referendum I have seen where there was a sanely worded "state: yes or no?" question that actually got a majority voting for the "state" option (52.5% or so), with something resembling sane turnout (~55%).
So yes, respecting this is probably a good idea. "Respecting" the 2012 or 2017 results by making Puerto Rico a state would not have made any sense.
Edit: Now that I have read https://senado.pr.gov/Legislations/ps1467-20.pdf page 31 lines 6-15, which define the "no" answer to mean a specific course of action which is not just "don't become a state", I am less happy with this referendum. Now we have to guess at how many people knew what the "no" was defined to mean and voted for what they perceived as the lesser of two evils based on that....
> 2020 is different and new: it's the first Puerto Rico referendum I have seen where there was a sanely worded "state: yes or no?" question
As I understand it in this referendum "yes" referred to "become a state" while "no" referred to "become independent", with no option for "keep the status quo".
The best thing to do would probably a referendum with a ranked/approval voting between all three options.
> I understand it in this referendum “yes” referred to “become a state” while “no” referred to “become independent”, with no option for “keep the status quo”.
You understand incorrectly. The question asked was:
“Should Puerto Rico be admitted immediately into the Union as a State? ( ) Yes ( ) No”
It's a little weird, now that I looked into this more deeply, because while that's what the referendum question said on the ballot, the law that put it there is https://senado.pr.gov/Legislations/ps1467-20.pdf and defines the "yes" and "no" answers to have the following meanings, respectively (page 31, lines 6-15, translation from Spanish mine):
- Yes: I demand that the Federal Government immediately recognize the equality of my rights and responsibilities as an American citizen with statehood in permanent union with all the states of the Union.
- No: I reject permanent union with statehood and demand that the Federal Government immediately recognize the sovereignty of Puerto Rico separate from the United States of America with a "Treaty of Independence in Free Association" or with "Total Independence".
Notably, that excludes the status quo as an option. The part right after that says:
In case the statehood "No" ends up as the majority choice, you must
immediately start a process of transition to recognize the sovereignty
of Puerto Rico separate from the United States of America with a
"Treaty of Independence in Free Association" or with "Total
Independence", following the description in this law.
What I don't know is to what extent people actually attached those meanings to the choices and hence whether it affected the vote at all, but defining the "Yes" and "No" answers to that question to have those specific meanings is a bit underhanded and quite unfortunate.
Sadly, this doesn't seem to be uncommon. In one city-level referendum I am personally familiar with, both sides of the referendum submitted an argument to be put into the election materials. The "Yes" side (loosen a safety regulation) drastically misrepresented the status quo, implying that there was no safety regulation to begin with, and that their referendum would create it. But in reality, the "Yes" vote would loosen an existing regulation.
I sort of agree that the 2012 and 2017 referendums were procedurally deficient and don't clearly indicate a preference for statehood, but they are sufficient to indicate that Congress should at least seriously consider the prospect, pending Puerto Rico confirming it in a further referendum (which they did in 2020).
I agree, in a world in which Congress actually performs its constitutional and moral duties (including little things like writing legislation, instead of just delegating more power to the executive branch). I wish we lived in that world...
It's not really Puerto Rico's decision, of course; the referendum is non-binding. It's Congress's decision, in the end, though officially adding Puerto Rico as a state against the wishes of a _majority_ of its citizens would be quite the odd thing to do, hence the referenda to see where things stand.
The answer varies. For example, in the US, depending on what you are trying to accomplish it ranges somewhere among "half of the population", "that one guy at the FCC who writes the policy", and "1/3 of either house of Congress or 1/4 of the state legislatures", right?
The 2012 referendum also had the statehood question effectively boycotted by many people who favored keeping the current status, because selecting "keep the current status" wasn't an option on that question (it was a separate question altogether, where it got 46% of the overall vote). So statehood got something like 61% of the votes of people who voted on the statehood-specific question at all, but only ~46% of the votes cast in the referendum; representing that as a "yes for statehood" is also pretty weird, since that's about the same number of votes that "keep the current status" got, with the remainder presumably favoring one of the other "more-independence" options.
2020 is different and new: it's the first Puerto Rico referendum I have seen where there was a sanely worded "state: yes or no?" question that actually got a majority voting for the "state" option (52.5% or so), with something resembling sane turnout (~55%).
So yes, respecting this is probably a good idea. "Respecting" the 2012 or 2017 results by making Puerto Rico a state would not have made any sense.
Edit: Now that I have read https://senado.pr.gov/Legislations/ps1467-20.pdf page 31 lines 6-15, which define the "no" answer to mean a specific course of action which is not just "don't become a state", I am less happy with this referendum. Now we have to guess at how many people knew what the "no" was defined to mean and voted for what they perceived as the lesser of two evils based on that....