Can Puerto Rico vote in 2024? Where the U.S. territory stands after Tony Hinchcliffe's racist Trump rally joke

The push for the Puerto Rican vote in the U.S. presidential election took center stage on Sunday when Kamala Harris made her appeal to Puerto Rican voters the same day a comedian at Donald Trump's New York City rally made a racist joke about the U.S. territory sparking outrage.

 So what are the rules around Puerto Ricans voting in the 2024 presidential election?

Puerto Ricans are taxpaying U.S. citizens who are able to vote, but their voting rights differ depending on whether they live in Puerto Rico or in one of the fifty U.S. states. 

For those who are residents living on the island, they do not get to vote in the November presidential election. However, they did have a say choosing the presidential nominees during the primary process.

Puerto Rico as well as other U.S. territories do hold primaries for both major political parties where they are granted delegates. 

While Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. do not have electoral votes for president in the general election, they can elect representation to Congress. That delegate, however, only gets to vote in procedural matters, not on legislation. 

Puerto Rican citizens have had U.S. citizenship for more than one-hundred years. Once they reside in a state, they can register and vote in the the state's local, state and federal elections including casting a ballot for president. 

So for those living and voting in any of the fifty U.S. states, they have significant political clout as part of the key Latino voting bloc come November.

That's where the appeal to Puerto Rican voters in the presidential election comes into play and could prove crucial to either candidate winning. 

There are an estimated nearly 5.8 million Puerto Ricans living in the fifty states and District of Columbia including a significant number living in battleground states. 

There are more than 1.1 million Puerto Ricans living in Florida followed by more than one million living in New York, the two states with the largest Puerto Rican populations, according to census data.

But there are also more than 466,000 Puerto Ricans living in Pennsylvania, more than 122,000 in North Carolina, more than 131,000 in Georgia and 69,000 in Wisconsin.

On Sunday, the vice president unveiled her plan for Puerto Ricans with a visit to a Puerto Rican restaurant in Pennsylvania to discuss her proposal. 

The pitch includes the creation of an economic task force where the government partners with private businesses to bring investments and more jobs to the territory. She has also called for modernizing the island's struggling energy grid. 

Her proposal comes as Harris is looking to shore up support among Latino voters overall. 

The latest ABC News/Ipsos poll released on Sunday showed Harris leads Trump 64 percent to 34 percent among Hispanic voters. That's down one point from the 2020 exit polls. 

The vice president leads among Hispanic men by 27 points and 32 points among Hispanic women.

While Harris was meeting with Puerto Rican voters in the Keystone State, Trump was holding a rally at Madison Square Garden where comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made his racist joke. 

In front of a packed arena, he called Puerto Rico a 'floating island of garbage' just hours before the ex-president took the stage.

The fallout was fast and furious with even some Republican lawmakers in states with large Puerto Rican populations, like Florida, denouncing it. 

Hours later, the Trump campaign also tried to distance itself from the joke claiming it does not reflect Trump's views, but the ex-president himself did not denounce it in his address. 

It remains to be seen whether the damage is lasting, but there was an avalanche of strong reactions on Sunday with a series of megastars endorsing Harris and slamming the Trump rally remarks. 

Among those now publicly backing the vice president is superstar Bad Bunny who shared her proposal for Puerto Rico multiple times on social media to his more than 45 million followers.

Singer Jennifer Lopez also shared the vice president's message to some 250 million followers, and Ricky Martin blasted the clip of the Hinchcliffe trashing Puerto Rico while backing Harris for president.