The Patriot Post® · Census Overhaul Promises Positive Outlook

One of the best ways to put the right people in leadership of a nation is to ensure that the people selecting those in power have the nation’s best interests in mind. In other words, allow only citizens to vote, and count only citizens in the nation’s census to reapportion the nation according to the number of real American citizens in each state.

President Donald Trump seems to be doing just that. The Census Bureau has announced a proposal to restrict residency criteria exclusively to American citizens who can vote only once per election, in the state where they primarily live. The proposal also seeks to eliminate race and ethnicity from the census.

For background, the U.S. Census currently counts all people living in the United States every 10 years. This includes citizens, of course, but also noncitizens living in the U.S. for work, school, or extended travel. Refugees and asylum seekers are counted. It also includes illegal or otherwise undocumented immigrants.

Per the Constitution, the census impacts congressional reapportionment, or how states gain or lose House seats based on population changes. So, one could imagine that counting millions of noncitizens would affect how congressional seats are allocated.

According to the Pew Research Center, illegal immigrants alone affected the 2020 census in such a way that California, Texas, and Florida all gained an extra seat, while Alabama, Ohio, and Minnesota were cheated out of a seat. This specific occurrence may not have affected the partisan margins, but a potential open border in 2029 could significantly affect the 2030 census.

Naturally, Democrats aren’t pleased. Virtually every illegal immigrant in this country will support the Democrat Party because they allow them to live within our borders with all the benefits and none of the responsibilities. The Left will object to removing voters from the census. California, for one, has historically been a state known for replacing its departing citizens with illegal immigrants to replace its population.

As always, they cite the Constitution out of context. New York Attorney General Letitia James said, “The Constitution is clear. Every person living in the United States, regardless of immigration status, must be counted in the census.” Yes, the Constitution says that the “whole number of persons in each State” should be counted, but it also presumes that everyone in the country is a member of a tax-obligated household. Sovereign Native American tribes living in American territory at the time were not counted, as they were not American citizens and did not pay taxes. The Constitution carries the theme of no taxation without representation, but it also implies the inverse: no representation without taxation. So despite the cherry-picking from the Left, only counting American citizens is not only constitutional, but required.

The Left also has a problem with eliminating race and ethnicity from the census. What should count as another victory in the Democrats’ alleged crusade against racism is apparently very problematic.

Eliminating race from the census should be a universally agreed-upon measure. It is one of the culminations of 200 years of work to make all people in this country equal. Race and ethnicity were necessary demographics when the census was created, due to the evils of slavery. Slaves only counted as 3/5ths of a person. Those demographics were kept into the era of segregation as a means of helping segregationists prevent blacks from voting. Now that all people in the USA have equal rights, and have had such for decades, it has rendered race and ethnicity in the census statistics pointless.

Unfortunately, the Left has still weaponized the race statistic, using it to create disproportionate minority districts nationwide, places that represent fewer people and are blatantly discriminatory based on race. They want to retain this power going into the next half-decade.

However, racial discrimination is illegal. In April, the Supreme Court effectively outlawed racially discriminatory gerrymandering, which will force certain states to correct the flawed districting. Eliminating racial demographics in the census will only affirm this.

The proposed changes to the census are largely positive, but enacting them and making them come to pass will be difficult. The exploitative tendencies that the Left has used to gain power and tokenize minority groups in this country need to stop; hopefully, this can be enforced so the best possible candidates can be elected.