On Wednesday, Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla said that by 2016, there will be a plebiscite to determine what to do about the U.S. commonwealth archipelago's political status.

According to Garcia, voters will have multiple options in the plebiscite, Associated Press reports.

The Obama administration previously promised $2.5 million to fund the plebiscite. The U.S. attorney general must approve the ballot before giving it to voters. After the plebiscite, the U.S. Congress would have to approve any possible changes to Puerto Rico's status.

Padilla and his Popular Democratic party support an "enhanced" commonwealth status, according to AP. The governor said he will collaborate with his party to create a solid definition of this status. Padilla has also stated that he is in favor of having a constitutional assembly determine Puerto Rico's status if President Obama does not take control.

In 2012, a plebiscite was released revealing that 54 percent of voters want to "change [the] island's territorial status." In addition, 61 percent said they would prefer statehood as a "non-territorial option," followed by being a sovereign free associated state (33 percent) and then being independent (6 percent).

Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi represents Puerto Rico in Congress and hopes to see Puerto Rico be granted statehood. The representative also supports a referendum to ask voters if they would like Puerto Rico to become the 51st state of the U.S.

"That is the easiest and most inclusive referendum we can offer," he said.

In a November 2012 two-part, nonbinding referendum, over 900,000 voters (54 percent) said they were satisfied with Puerto Rico being a commonwealth. When asked to select a preferred status, almost 800,000 voters (61 percent) were in favor of statehood, while 437,000 voters supported free association and 72,560 voted for independence. Almost 500,000 voters did not answer the question.

A group has been formed within the commonwealth named Reunificación de Puerto Rico con España (Puerto Rico Reunification With Spain), which aims to eventually formally reach out to the Spanish Consulate, followed by the Spanish government, before going to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands to "contest" the American War's Treaty of Paris, which took Puerto Rico from Spain and awarded it to the U.S.

"The U.S. distorted our history," Jose Nieves, founder of the group, told Fox News Latino in June. "... We want to become Spaniards again, to be autonomous community No. 18 of a country that we never wanted to abandon. ... Our priority is to have historic justice done because Puerto Rico and Spain were forcefully separated."
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