Editor's Note: This column is co-authored by Rep. Chuck Edwards and Dan Stein.
Heading into the 2024 elections, just 37 percent of Americans believe they “will be both honest and open to rightful voters.” Among the issues driving this distrust is concern that there are no guaranteed guardrails in place to prevent noncitizens – even illegal aliens, who have arrived in the millions under the Biden administration – from registering and casting votes. Voter registration is largely carried out on the honor system and, in many places in the country, voter ID is not yet required to cast a vote.
Even if not a single illegal alien casts a vote, their mere presence in this country is having a profound impact on the outcome of elections. Their impact will grow even greater after the 2030 Census, just six years from now, when each state’s congressional apportionment and Electoral College votes for the coming decade are determined.
The Constitution mandates that a census be carried out every ten years, in which everyone who is present in the United States, regardless of their citizenship and immigration status, is counted. It does not specify whether noncitizens or illegal aliens must be counted for the purpose of apportioning representation in the House of Representatives.
Though common sense dictates that only citizens should be counted for apportionment purposes, illegal aliens have nonetheless counted toward the final tallies that determine how many House seats each state is allocated and the number of electoral votes it will wield in presidential elections. The question of whether illegal aliens should be counted for these purposes have been the subject of legal battles dating back decades (including in a 1980 lawsuit filed by the Federation for American Immigration Reform), with courts so far generally deciding that plaintiffs have lacked standing.
Last month, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability did precisely that. The committee approved H.R. 7109, the Equal Representation Act (introduced by myself, Chuck Edwards) which would require that only U.S. citizens be counted for the purpose of congressional apportionment. Last week, the House passed it. Enacting this legislation into law is vitally important to ensuring that the American people receive fair representation in Congress and that they – and only they – determine the outcomes of presidential elections.
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As of 2023, there were an estimated 16.8 million illegal aliens living in the U.S. After the 2020 Census, the average congressional district was comprised of 761,169 residents, meaning that the current illegal alien population is the equivalent of roughly 22 congressional districts. And since the illegal alien population is not evenly distributed throughout the nation, American citizens in some states are losing representation in Congress to illegal aliens in other states.
After the 2020 Census, California, which has the largest population of illegal aliens, came away with four more House seats and electoral votes than it might otherwise have received, if not for the 3 million people living there illegally. Texas had an illegal alien population large enough to increase its congressional delegation by two members, while Florida and New York each had illegal alien populations amounting to an additional seat. Even states with fewer than 761,169 illegal aliens gained representation and electoral clout because illegal aliens tipped the scales in their favor. Since decennial reapportionment is a zero-sum game, that means that those are seats and electoral votes that came at the expense of U.S. citizens living in other states.
As consequential as the presence of illegal aliens will be in deciding national elections for the remainder of this decade, it will be even more so in the next decade if illegal aliens are again included in the Census for the purpose of apportionment. The 2020 Census was concluded before the unprecedented wave of illegal immigration triggered by the policies of the Biden administration.
According to a January 2024 report by the House Judiciary Committee, more than 3.3 million illegal aliens had been released into the United States during the first three years of the Biden administration. Another 1.8 million “gotaways” are known to have entered the country during that same period, bringing the total (conservatively) to 5.1 million illegal aliens – and we’re not even halfway through this decade. Unless H.R. 7109 is enacted, all of these new illegal aliens, and those who will arrive between now and April 1, 2030, will vastly increase the ability of people who are here illegally to determine the outcome of our elections, even if none of them casts a vote.
Our lawless immigration system is already shaking the confidence of the American people in countless ways. Without reforms to how our Censuses are conducted, confidence in the integrity of our electoral system, which has already been dangerously weakened, could be eroded entirely in the coming decade.
Chuck Edwards (R), represents North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District. Dan Stein is President of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
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