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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."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @01:35PM (8 children)
In case you were just born yesterday, there have been myriad problems with vote tabulation throughout history. High-tech has added new layers of potential problems, including "hacking".
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday July 24 2020, @02:39PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @03:54PM
You get 2 upmods sir.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @03:57PM
Apologies- my post was meant for previous AC. Human error; corrections not allowed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @06:19PM
But, khallow was born yesterday, he's a Millenniall.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday July 25 2020, @05:33AM
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Sunday July 26 2020, @09:06AM (2 children)
Oh, OK. I guess we don't need to worry about trying to fix it then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @02:53PM (1 child)
No, by all means, keep on worrying. That approach has worked so well so far. Sorry for the sarcasm, but as far as I can tell society is full of problems that never get fixed. Do you have any suggestions for fixing the problem?
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday July 27 2020, @11:25PM
Yes.
These are a start. Going further, please improve the quality of the election process by introducing preferential or runoff voting.