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Comment by woo49 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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.

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

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