Bill Whittle can’t understand the Constitutional problem with asking a citizenship question on the decennial census, since the entire purpose of the census is to determine Congressional apportionment, and only citizens can vote…so far. Progressives and Democrats say that legal immigrants will avoid answering the census if it might jeopardize the ability of their illegal friends and family to stay in the United States.
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Citizenship Question on Census: Constitutional Problem or Threat to Democrat Politicians?
Bill Whittle can’t understand the Constitutional problem with asking a citizenship question on the decennial census, since the entire purpose of the census is to determine Congressional apportionment, and only citizens can vote…so far. Progressives and Democrats say that legal immigrants will avoid answering the census if it might jeopardize the ability of their illegal friends and family to stay in the United States.
20 replies on “Citizenship Question on Census: Constitutional Problem or Threat to Democrat Politicians?”
And after threatening to delay the census indefinably Trump found a form of words the majority of judges consented to, apparently all done by email.
Trump should simply pass a executive order that he is going to count all the worlds population in congressional seat calculation allocating the new “voters” to the least represented states and districts first to equalise all their notional populations. I suggest this be called the Flyover Country Equality executive order.
You may need a bigger building.
Note that this doesn’t really necessarily afford non-citizens the right to vote. That isn’t the real purpose. Its power is in increasing the relative electoral power behind those leftists with large numbers of non-citizens in their midst. After all, the annointed left can vote FOR their slaves. That sounds remarkably like the slave states at the time of the framing of the Constitution, doesn’t it?
I sorta suggested to a leftist friend that their resistance to the question is why the framers had to have the 3/5ths compromise. Yes, it is the left, i.e. the same ideological folks, who are driving towards having a large number of people who aren’t eligible vote included towards apportionment. Also, that I didn’t understand why anyone would be “afraid for their lives” (their words) in having that question on the census.
Besides, the 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th amendments, you know. I suggested a brief read of those.
I got unfriended AND BLOCKED. I had kept that person on my friends list for entertainment, so I only trolled her posts lightly, but I couldn’t watch that train wreck any longer.
I gave up discussing anything with leftists on FB years ago. So I guess they won the censorship fight with me, because they shut me up. And to be fair, I don’t think they were actually trying to shut me up then the way that, in general, leftists do today. But I didn’t want to argue with my friends and relations anymore. Too much energy, too much risk of hurt feelings and ruined holidays.
But this is my social media now, so Elizabeth, I’ll “send you a friend request” here on the BW site. š
I had been keeping this person on my friends list because she was someone of some prominence. I did seen that she clearly maintained a sort of echo chamber loaded with sycophants. I guess she doesn’t understand that if you only expose yourself to ideas that you approve of, then you don’t even understand those ideas.
I believe the house representation is based on total population, not just on citizen or voter population. So, for matters of representation apportionment, lots of illegals or non citizens means more representatives in the house for that district, so each citizen’s vote actually has more impact than in an area with only citizens living there.
From the census bureau: “The apportionment calculation is based upon the total resident population (citizens and noncitizens) of the 50 states. In the 2010 Census, the apportionment population also includes U.S. Armed Forces personnel and federal civilian employees stationed outside the United States (and their dependents living with them) that can be allocated back to a home state. These segments were also included in the apportionment population in the 1970, 1990, and 2000 censuses. The population of the District of Columbia is not included in the apportionment population.”
Section 2 of the 14th amendment clearly refutes what the census bureau states in that quote. Ok, not so clearly. But read the following to help you understand that only citizens who have the right to vote shall be counted for apportionment.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=236241
I had not read that excerpt before. Thanks.
The leftists are interested in apportioning federal MONEY, not just votes. This is especially true in the education community. More warm bodies = more $$$. BW is right when he says the government should āfit into the box it came ināāthe massive bloat of the Fed that first takes our $ then sends it back has perverted the census.
The Huffing Piss
I asked this, and Bill responded (in his manner, which means he went off on an epic tangent, but why not have the Census form be this simple.
1) what is the address of your dwelling?
2) how many people live here?
3) how many are US Citizens?
Leave out all other info. If we don’t know the ethnic makeup of a district, it can’t be used for nefarious purposes, by either party.
Aside – I got to use nefarious in a sentence, cheers!
I still think this is terrific. Big fan. But I think you also need to ask the ages of at least the citizens so that you know how many voters you have.
Any other data the feds want to collect, including all of the traditional questions asked on previous censuses (about everything from language spoken to radios), should be contracted out to general polling and commercial data collecting companies. They can ask all the questions they want about anything they want and do all the sampling and extrapolating they want as long as the power of government to compel you to answer anything is absent. And they will do a much, much more accurate and efficient (not to mention frequent) job at such data collection than the Census Bureau ever could.
I am all for contracting out any possible government service.
This is sort of like the various travel ban things which it was said āthe policy itself is constitutional in a vacuum but I donāt like why you did itā. The second part of the sentence is an utter irrelevancy. Beyond that, no explanation is owed to anyone.
Trump should add the question regardless. Co-equal branches of government and all… Why give John Roberts final say over something so obvious and clear. It’s like allowing John Roberts to declare that 2+2=5 and thus all mathematics texts in America must be rewritten. Good luck reaching the moon with that math programmed into your orbital calculations.
This was all John Roberts, who was the swing vote. He’s the one who made the “motivation” an issue and wrote the majority opinion. But what is strange is that apparently the DOJ was not even making the plain-language constitutional argument.
Gorsuch and Thomas wrote scathing dissents.
It’s also worth noting that the census no longer is an attempt to count every person. They use sampling. That is, they only attempt to get responses from a comparatively small percentage of people. Then, only one tenth of those people get the “long form” which has more detailed questions. From the percentage of responses they get back, they then extrapolate about the rest of the population and base apportionment on their extrapolation.
So there are pretty reasonable concerns about data manipulation and the deep state, and also about the constitutionality of the entire process.
I’m not sure this question would make any difference. If a person doesn’t respect the law and enters the country illegally, what makes you think they would have any problem with lying on a census form?
You are correct Bill. This is the simplest damn issue. The decision should have been 9-0 in favor of adding the question to the census. But ultimately, I am rather sick of John Roberts for his duplicitous reasoning and ideological rulings. He blew it with Obama care and he is wrong now as well.
“I would run it into the ground until it is red and sticky!” – Bill Whittle, July 4, 2019
LOL