Why Immigrants Don't Need to Vote to Matter

Their Mere Numbers Can Win Elections for the Unscrupulous

It is widely understood that the number of seats each state has in the House of Representatives is based on the state’s population as determined by the decennial U.S. Census, and that the number of House seats determines the number of Electors each state can appoint to the Electoral College.

It is less widely understood that the number of House seats and electors allocated to each state is based on the state's total population, not just the voting population. That total population includes overseas U.S. military personnel and federal civilian employees domiciled in-state, as well as all state residents, both citizens and non-citizens, regardless of their immigration status. Thus the total population includes undocumented immigrants.

Not only are the number of seats allocated based on total population, but apportion of voting districts is also by total population, a situation confirmed as the law of the land by the 2016 Supreme Court case Evenwell v. Abott.  Thus, an unscrupulous political party can simply admit illegal immigrants into states and, even though those immigrants do not vote, alter the voting districts within those states to create more representatives.

By this means, undocumented immigrants can indirectly but powerfully impact the election of Representatives and Presidents.

In considering the implications of this, it is worth remembering that our Founding Fathers grappled with a comparable issue early on in the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, known as the Three-Fifths Compromise.

The Three-Fifths Compromise was a pivotal agreement reached during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention between Southern and Northern states that had profound implications on the political power dynamics in the early years of the United States.

The primary issue at the heart of the Three-Fifths Compromise was how slaves would be counted when determining a state's total population for legislative representation and taxing purposes. Southern states, where slavery was prevalent, wanted to count enslaved people in their populations to increase their representation in Congress. Northern states, where slavery was less common, argued that slaves should not be counted since they were not treated as citizens with voting rights.

The compromise solution was that three-fifths of the slave population would be counted for both representation and taxation purposes. This meant that for every five slaves, three people would be added to the state's population count. This agreement significantly affected the political landscape of the United States.

By counting slaves as three-fifths of a person for congressional representation, the Southern states gained more seats in the House of Representatives than they would have if slaves had not been counted at all. This gave the Southern states more political power in the federal government than they would have had otherwise. And, since the number of electors each state had in the Electoral College was based on its total number of Senators and Representatives, the Three-Fifths Compromise also indirectly influenced presidential elections.

Of course, the Three-Fifths Compromise was eventually rendered moot by the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in 1865, and the subsequent amendments which granted full citizenship and voting rights regardless of race. But, with levels of immigration into the US at now unprecedented levels, a similar situation has re-appeared.

Today, states which have a large population of non-citizen residents, whether legal or illegal, are in the position that the slave-owning states were in the early years of the Republic — a position of greater influence both overall and per citizen. Indeed, it’s my belief that the current immigration crisis has to be understood as a situation comparable in magnitude to that which necessitated the Three-Fifths Compromise.

To use an extreme example, consider a state with a population of 1 citizen and 50,000,000. Should it have the same number of electors and representatives as a state with a population of 50,000,001 citizens? And should the 1 citizen have the same influence as the 50,000,000?

Contemplate this on the Tree of Woe.