Nate Silver did an interesting analysis of this ability back in 2009 (before joining the New York Times): http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/04/messing-with-te

Nate Silver did an interesting analysis of this ability back in 2009 (before joining the New York Times): http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/04/messing-with-texas.html http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/04/messing-with-texas.ht... Puerto Rico already voted in favor of becoming a state in 2012. The only thing stopping it from happening now is a simple majority vote of Congress[0]. Personally, I think giving Puerto Rico, a territory that already must obey federal laws, the ability to vote on said federal laws is a much higher priority than splitting up the states that we already have. ...which is to say, of course, that I imagine that none of these will happen anytime soon. [0] As best as I could tell, the threshold for statehood really is this low.