Puerto Rico is not part of our union. And until recently, Puerto Rico generally wanted to be the gray area it is in within the USA. It's not sovereign, but it is exempted from laws that apply to all other states and incorporated territories. It can have a lower tax rate, doesn't have to follow the same regulations. It's like being part of the EU without having to follow all the rules.

And unlike US states, it can be granted independence by a simple vote of congress. It gives them the option to gain independence.

It's important to note they are full citizens in every respect. If you move from Puerto Rico to Florida, you instantaneously can vote, without having to anything other than register the same way Floridians do. And a Floridian who moves to Puerto Rico loses their ability to vote for President and doesn't have real representation in Congress either.

Though some territories, like American Samoa, don't even get citizenship. They are full-on colonies.

We don't have _federal_ voting rights in the US. We have the ability to vote for our city/state(oh-boy) policy and politicians. We also have a commissioner that 'represents' puerto rico in the house* of reps.

We also don't have to pay _federal_ taxes so we aren't being taxed without representation.

States have sovereignty separate from the federal government. Tribal nations have limited sovereignty from federal government. Territories do not have any sovereignty from the federal government - they basically are the same entity. Since the federal government was created by and is formed by sovereign states, no, territorial landholdings of that federal government don’t have a role. Think about them like a city relative to a state. Or perhaps like the frontier - they are lands held by the country, underdeveloped, and depending on sophistication of population, may or may not have organized local governments - and in those cases, yes, people vote for their own local government. When you think of the “wild west” those were territories that eventually achieved statehood. Or Alaska. People born in those territories (US Nationals) can move to US states to live and work, or continue to live in the “frontier”. And trust me, there are aspects of living in the frontier that make it “freer” than living in a state - basically that people give less of a shit what goes on out there if they even know where “there” is. Some territories (like Marshall Islands) elect not to become states but to become sort of quasi protectorates for lack of a better term - having their own internationally recognized sovereignty as independent nations but in tight alliance with and under the defensive umbrella of the US. At risk of pushing too many analogies, saying the US is less democratic because territories don’t have the same rights as states would be like saying your country is less democratic for not letting adolescents vote in elections. Well, maybe that’s true in strictest sense of the term, but then “full democracy” by that definition is not really anyone’s ideal. Perfectly pure systems for their own sake are usually not a desirable end outside of thought experiments.

The US is a democracy, but it's not a fair democracy. All non-proportionate[1] democracies are unfair in one respect or another. On a macroscopic set of trends, it's been getting more fair over the centuries.

[1] One can make arguments for why non-proportionate elections might be better than proportionate ones, but those arguments do not include 'non-proportionate elections are more fair'.

non-proportional elections are not what makes US democracy unfair. The real problem is that US has bunch of laws which seem specifically designed to deter poor black people from voting: the lack of government issued ID (which in my country you can get for free), not enough polling stations, forcing people wanting to vote to stand in line for HOURS, gerrymandering, or even the fact that US elections are held on work days instead of holidays (making it harder for people who work two jobs to find a time to vote).

There are multiple axes by which a democracy can be unfair. It's possible to have a fully enfranchised population, but let a constituency of five people determine one delegate, while a constituency of five million people determines another.

Only recognized states are given federal voting rights by the constitution. Puerto Rico is designated as a territory. That’s the logic at least.