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posted by martyb on Friday July 24 2020, @09:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the counting-is-hard-when-it-counts dept.

With No Final Say, Trump Wants To Change Who Counts For Dividing Up Congress' Seats:

President Trump released a memorandum Tuesday that calls for an unprecedented change to the constitutionally mandated count of every person living in the country — the exclusion of unauthorized immigrants from the numbers used to divide up seats in Congress among the states.

The memo instructs Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Commerce Department, to include in the legally required report of census results to the president "information permitting the President, to the extent practicable" to leave out the number of immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization from the apportionment count.

But the move by the president, who does not have final authority over the census, is more likely to spur legal challenges and political spectacle in the last months before this year's presidential election than a transformation of the once-a-decade head count, which has been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

[...] Since the first U.S. census in 1790, both U.S. citizens and noncitizens — regardless of immigration status — have been included in the country's official population counts.

The fifth sentence of the Constitution specifies that "persons" residing in the states should be counted every 10 years to determine each state's share of seats in the House of Representatives. The 14th Amendment, which ended the counting of an enslaved person as "three fifths" of a free person, goes further to require the counting of the "whole number of persons in each state."

It is Congress — not the president — that Article 1, Section 2 of the country's founding document empowers to carry out the "actual enumeration" of the country's population in "such manner as they shall by law direct."

In Title 2 of the U.S. Code, Congress detailed its instructions for the president to report to lawmakers the tally of the "whole number of persons" living in each state for the reapportionment of House seats. In Title 13, Congress established additional key dates for the "tabulation of total population."


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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @01:08PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @01:08PM (#1025743)

    The states most effected would be CA, FL, TX, AZ, NM, and many of the flyover states. California is the only one of these that would benefit him by reducing the representation in the electoral college. The only thing I can imagine, is that by doing this he is setting up a case for contesting the election:

    "I said only special people are counted! Look you counted others, the election is invalid!" kind of argument.

    Really there shouldn't be any arguments about Trump anymore. The argument should be:

    "Should or shouldn't the guard stay at home and eat cheeto's when they are called up to defend D.C.?"

    Personally I'm all for an emergency couch potato fund, to pay any soldier who chooses not to get between the mob and capitol hill.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @03:08PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @03:08PM (#1025805)

    The fascists are in full circle-jerk mode in this thread. I wonder how few of them there are running sock puppet accounts to make their bullshit seem more acceptable.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @03:23PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @03:23PM (#1025809)

      Speaking of circle-jerking, you beat your meat to the idea of naaaazis and fashists around every corner. How many semen-crusted sock puppets do you have?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2020, @11:45PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2020, @11:45PM (#1026353)

        Just you oh absorbent one.