A word of advice to American citizens: if you want your kids to be able to vote in their first presidential election, make sure they don’t live in Guam when they turn 18.

You may recall the headlines earlier this week such as “Obama wins Guam caucuses by seven votes over Clinton” which were followed up by articles describing last weekend’s primary vote as the sole opportunity for Guam residents to have a say in who will be the next President of the USA. In my arrogance, I assumed that someone at AP didn’t have their facts straight. Of course they could vote. I live in Canada, and I can vote, and they live in Guam, which is actually officially a US territory. And of course, I believed that guaranteed voting rights were fundamental to what makes the US a democracy (at least in theory).

It turns out that 1. a Harvard degree isn’t a certification for a complete working knowledge of the US Constitution (yikes?) and 2. people in Guam actually don’t get to vote for their next President this November. And not just Guam: people in every American territory who cannot claim prior residence in a state or the District of Columbia will be able to do nothing but watch as we go to the polls on election day. (Those who can claim the prior residence will be able to vote by mail before election day.)

It’s true that thanks to the 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th Constitutional amendments along with the 1965 Voting Rights Act, there are a litany of reasons why someone cannot be denied the right to vote. This includes race, color, sex, income, and age (if one is 18 or older). But the US Constitution does not actually guarantee citizens the right to vote. Perhaps this should have been obvious to me given the ridiculous number of convicted felons (2 million+) who have now temporarily (or permanently, depending on state of residence) lost their right to vote. But I had never really stopped to think about it.

Now I have, and here’s the break-down: this has everything to do with the fact that the USA was explicitly built as a federation of states. States retain a number of rights over their residents, including the ability to determine who has the right to vote. There is some tension between these rights and the Federal government’s rights, especially as the Feds have repeatedly stepped in to restrict how states can exclude voters from the pool. But essentially, most Americans are guaranteed the right to vote. Although arguably these rights are not always enforced as evidenced in Florida in both 2000 and 2004, and Ohio and Michigan in 2004.

Enter the colonies, or to be more PC, the territories. These places are neither states nor foreign countries. Thus they may have Congressional representation, but their reps are non-voting. The individual political parties (all two of them) may allot them delegates in primary races, but they have no representation in the Electoral College. Indeed, the USA is a federation of states, not a federation of states and territories. Because the US Constitution wasn’t designed with the rights of colonies in mind, these places (Puerto Rico, Guam, the Marshall Islands [where your Gap t-shirt is probably made]) are kind of a voting no-man’s land. As long as they “choose” not to become independent or to take on the burden/privilege of state status, their citizens* will be able to choose candidates but not elected officials.

Somehow this seems unfair. In the country that regularly bills itself as the world’s greatest democracy, citizenship isn’t the only prerequisite for full voting rights. So much for spreading democracy around the world — the entire USA isn’t even covered. So while the 40 million+ Americans living without health care look north to Canada for an example of how we can do better, I suggest that the approximately 270 million US citizens down south also look to Canada for a lesson in democracy. Here, section three of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms reads:

“Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of the members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.”