Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Representation For Non-Citizens

We've been doing this for a long time but the issue finally made it to the SCOTUS where 8-0 it was determined that allocating representatives to the U.S. House based on a districts population of warm bodies regardless of their actual eligibility to vote or citizenship status was in fact constitutional.

The ruling implied that counting only citizens would pass muster as well, but it looks like no one actually does this. Illegals don't need to vote. They get representation by default.

6 comments:

Sailorcurt said...

The first thing that leads me to believe this is a non-issue is the fact that the decision was 8-0. It must have been pretty clear cut.

And when you look at the supreme law of the land, the US Constitution, Amendment 14 clearly states:

"Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed."

The very next part talking about voting rights specifically mentions citizens as a criteria for that. Had the 14th amendment meant only to include citizens among the "whole numbers of persons in each state", it would have said so.

I think the decision was clearly the correct one based on the Constitution.

David Aitken said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
David Aitken said...

And at the time, I think, only property owners could vote, so they were counting women, children, people in boarding houses, recent immigrants, etc.

Billll said...

The argument does go back to the "3/5" solution when the congress agreed that slaves who couldn't vote and had no rights would be counted as 3/5 of a person for purposes of assigning representatives lest the slave owning south wind up dominating the House by quite literally buying votes.

Billll said...

It seems the 3/5 solution sets precedent for defining "person" however the congress decided.

Anonymous said...

Any count of population for purposes of representation should include corporations. Corporations are people, and have the right to be represented. Only a special-snowflake socialist idiot would think otherwise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAOrT0OcHh0