Can someone please explain to me why territories of the US are not allowed to vote?

Question

such as the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. My teacher told us but I forgot a little. I remember him telling us something like he Constitution does not follow the flag. So can someone explain.

Answer 1

First of all the Territories of the US are allowed to vote on some things. They do not have congressmen so they do not vote for them. Since they are territories they do not get electoral college votes either. Other than that they do get to vote. Once the territories decide to become states and meet the criteria then they will get those votes.

Answer 2

Only full states are issued electoral votes.  Our territories are free to petition to become full states.  It's really in the hands of the people that live in those territories.  

Answer 3

They can vote all they want, but it would be rather pointless because they don't have any electoral votes.

Answer 4

Actually many of them do vote in the primaries. For them to vote in a federal general election or presidential election it would take an act of congress, or them voting foe and applying for Statehood. Puerto Rico has voted down applying for statehood several times.

Answer 5

Because they have to become legal citizens of the united states first

territories of the u.s are not necessarily part of the actual u.s.

Answer 6

they need to obtain statehood b/c of electoral college

Answer 7

The reason this is considered an acceptable situation stems back to one of the major slogans of the revolution:

"No taxation without representation!"

Well, the territories don't pay any federal taxes, so the federal government doesn't feel it has to give them a vote in national elections. They elect their own local governments, of course.

Before you get the right to vote for the leaders of the united states, you must go through the process of becoming one of the united states. Puerto Rico has been offered statehood before, but they've repeatedly chosen to not pay any federal taxes instead (that's a big oversimplification, though). The more contraversial one is Washington DC, which is as integrated into the country as possible, but only gets a non-voting member of the house of representatives. They do get to vote for president, though.

Note that political parties have wide latitude in their nomination procedure. The parties allows those territories to vote in the primaries.