Hacker News Reader

Comment by ComputerGuru | Hacker News Reader

But that’s the whole point of the census. I agree Democrats wouldn’t care if it weren’t politically beneficial, but in this case their interest and the law coincide. Everyone, legal resident or not, should be counted. There’s zero legal /constitutional question about it. If you’re going to get angry every time someone does the right thing for the wrong reasons, I am afraid you’re in for a lifetime of disappointment.

Now if Democrats were trying to increase census coverage in Florida, Texas, NY, and IL while playing games to get census takers to skip traversing the vast emptiness of Montana and Wyoming, I’d agree that you have a point. But that’s not the case.

View on HN

If there wasn’t a constitutional question there wouldn’t be an upcoming Supreme Court case about it.

And let’s be real - I find it pretty unlikely the constitution and 14th Amendment were written with massive amounts of illegal aliens being in the country in mind. Should we count tourists from other countries as well?

It seems obvious to me the census is intended to count everyone living there, legally or otherwise. So tourists wouldn’t count.

It’s not so clear. Tourists are free people, and it might make sense to count them if we are trying to allocate resources to serve all free people (which tourists are).

If you don’t count tourists, why would you count migrants who are supposedly going back to their home country? Maybe tourists who are here for 6 months would be analogous.

Who said we should count migrants that are supposedly going back to their country?

Lots of commenters here.

The Constitution was, however, written with massive amounts of slaves being in the country in mind. And even they were counted as three fifths of a person. Should illegal immigrants be counted as less?

At the time, slavery was legal. Unauthorized residency is not.

It’s not as simple.

Essentially the vote of two US citizens does not count equally if you count everyone.

If one lives in an area with more illegal immigrants, that US citizens votes foe him/her but also for the non voters in the area. This is not a ‘one person one vote’ situation and it’s a real concern if you believe in equal representation.

Ideally you’d have a citizenship question and you count only citizens for electoral college allocation and everyone for non electoral college matters. But that creates concerns of undercounting etc.

That is not how the US census had ever worked. See the 3/5 Compromise.

> Essentially the vote of two US citizens does not count equally if you count everyone.

It's not just about the vote. Redistricting is one aspect of it, sure, but it's not the sole reason a census is done.

It's done primarily to predict tax revenues, predict infrastructure needs, predict growth patterns, support municipal planning, etc., all of which are necessities for projects that often span decades.

If you're concerned about the vote, deal with the challenge posed by the electoral college instead. The Census is used for too many other things to be manipulated for the sake of political interests by one party.

Elected officials represent all the constituents in their district, not just the citizens.

Are you mad that the census counts children too? They don't vote either. Would you favor the census skipping children? Should the census count people who don't regularly vote? How about felons denied the right to vote? People judged too mentally incompetent to vote? Just who all are you willing to not count?

> Are you mad that the census counts children too?

This is a good point.

Should a district be penalized because their constituents chose to have more kids per family unit than others? Their voting power would go down in the interim, wouldn't it?

Thanks for raising the argument - it does a good job of showing why tying the census to voting power is meaningless.

Sometimes the reductio ad absurdum is helpful. But really the poster's initial argument is just complete ignorant nonsense. Perhaps they have never read the Constitution's definition of the Census or are unaware of 200+ years of history.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com