The status plebiscites of 1993 and 1998

Puerto Rico returned to the status question it had first put to voters in 1967 with a second referendum held on November 14, 1993, again offering the same three options: continue as a Free Associated State, statehood, or independence. With strong turnout of 73.5 percent, a plurality of voters chose to continue as a Free Associated State, extending an arrangement that by then was more than four decades old.

A third referendum followed on December 13, 1998, but this time the ballot looked very different. Instead of the familiar three options, it listed five: limited self-government, free association, statehood, sovereignty, and "none of the above." That expanded, more technical ballot immediately became controversial in its own right. Disputes erupted over how each option had actually been defined, and Free Associated State advocates specifically urged voters to choose "none of the above," arguing that the ballot's own definition of Free Associated State status did not correctly recognize the constitutional protections attached to U.S. citizenship and the "mutual consent" nature the relationship was supposed to carry.

That campaign worked. A narrow majority of voters, 50.5 percent, chose "none of the above," a genuinely strange result for a formal status referendum: the winning option was, by definition, not a status at all. A 2011 report by the Congressional Research Service later concluded that the lack of legally precise definitions of the status options, acceptable to Congress, on the ballot was itself a central reason these repeated votes kept producing inconclusive results, more than any lack of interest or commitment on the part of Puerto Rican voters themselves.

The pattern this site has traced since the 1967 plebiscite held firm to the end of the century: Puerto Ricans kept showing up to vote on their own political future, and the underlying question, first written in the ambiguous language of the 1952 Constitution, remained unresolved at the close of this era.

Sources: Referéndum de estatus de Puerto Rico de 1993; Referéndum de estatus de Puerto Rico de 1998. See Sources. Freeze 2026-08-22.