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Puerto Rican’s arriving stateside have a learning curve to master when it comes to Florida politics. Sebastien Malo and Adriana Brasileiro writing for the Thomson Reuters Foundation News have just published a fascinating, and must read article, on the effects of climate change and electoral politics that are beginning to appear in the State of Florida. Specifically, the story focuses on those Americans who relocated to the continental United States due to the collapse of infrastructure caused by the double whammy to the island of Puerto Rico from the climate change enhanced hurricanes, Maria and Irma.
Puerto Rico is still reeling from those storms. The fossil fuel powered electrical system for the islands 3.4 million residents went out, roofs peeled off homes, poisoned water supplies, flood damage and hunger. Many left the island, some temporarily, some for good.
Reuters points out that 135,000 Puerto Ricans relocated to the United States “in the six months after Maria, according to a report published this month by the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York”. Of those, 56,000 relocated to Florida, primarily to Orlando.
Groups like Boricua Vota, a non partisan group focused on Puerto Rican voter registration, are currently in a registration drive for new arrivals from the island. If these newly registered voters actually vote than it means that “at least seven of 27 congressional seats in south and central Florida are now too close to call in elections coming later this year”.
Supporters of Puerto Rican activist group “Boricua Vota” ("A Puerto Rican Votes") watch a show held as part of a voter registration drive in Orlando, Florida, on March 9, 2018.Trump carried Florida in 2016 by about 110,000 votes. It is the third largest state in the country, a purple state, and the influx of voters from the island will have an impact on the states politics.
In Florida "the Latino community is being turned off" by the racist rhetoric of Republicans on immigration policy and the idiotic Trump plan to build the wall. Rick Scott is a NRA stooge, and the March for our lives movement are ready to “vote them out”. Hopefully the GOP strangle hold grip on power will be loosened in the mid-terms. Climate change is an obvious concern for Puerto Ricans, they went through hell as a result.
For political scientist Nick Obradovich, the scramble to send Puerto Ricans to Florida's voting booths may herald things to come in the United States as the global climate changes, bringing more extreme weather and potentially more displacement.
"That is the sort of event that is more likely to occur in the future," Obradovich told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is among a handful of scholars looking at how a warming climate is affecting the political process, including in the United States.
In a study published last year in the journal Climate Change, Obradovich found incumbent politicians in 19 countries - including the United States - were less likely to get re-elected as temperatures increased and voters' well-being declined.
He believes the trend may eventually bring new risks for democracies.
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Voters may start kicking out politicians for being unable to fend off the spiraling effects of climate change - and that could push elected representatives who favor thoughtful, longer-term approaches to ditch them for populist, short-sighted policies, he said.
"Especially at the more local levels (politicians) ... only have so much that they can do in response to environmental stress," he said.
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