The ballot asked one question: Should Puerto Rico be immediately admitted as a US state? After counting 95 percent of the votes, the results showed that 52 percent of Puerto Ricans said yes.
The results of the nonbinding referendum will need approval from the US Congress, which so far, has never acted on the island’s previous referendums, the last of which was organised in 2017.
Puerto Ricans are US citizens but they cannot vote in the US presidential elections. The oldest colony in the world is exempt from the US federal income tax, but it gets less federal funding than US states, which has been raising concerns amid the coronavirus pandemic.