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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: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @04:44PM (3 children)
Buy a gun? Participate in armed organized militias? Run for public office?
Selective Service? The Draft if it comes back? Defend against all enemies of the US and constitution foreign and domestic? Can the US draft non-citizens? Serve on a jury?
The census being used to appropriate power in the federal government. Counting people is one thing. Appropriating power to people that have no legal claim to representation in the federal government is quite another. Also incentivizing states to break federal law to gain more power and money.
There is more to it than voting. Illegal aliens already broke federal law by entering illegally. It fundamentally undermines the point of the US being a nation of laws. It undermines the purpose of a government for the people by the people and the democratic processes to pursue that goal. Democracy means nothing if you ignore the laws created by democratic means.
As AC pointed out earlier, is kind of ironic that an effective slave population is being used to defend the power of the democratic party. Again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @06:00PM (1 child)
The constitution is explicitly clear. There isn't room here to bend to some kind of "originalist" or "whaeverist" type of interpretive arguments. There is no confusion in language. You count everybody. Period. And you use that count to apportion representatives.
If you want to change it to alleviate your white grievances, then amend the Constitution. You can't reinterpret it because you are afraid of brown people, but you are allowed to change it if you are afraid. You just have to convince a lot of people to do that, but don't worry, you've got a guy at the top who is trying his damndest to scare all the other nervous white people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @10:40PM
Finally, an ardent defender of the 2nd amendment. Preach, brother!
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday July 25 2020, @03:32AM
Your Forefathers were pretty clear with their "no taxation without representation" slogan. If they pay taxes, they should be allowed to vote. Limiting voting to citizens only happened in the last century.