Gosh, I always thought its purpose was to count how many American CITIZENS there were and how they were distributed geographically and demographically.  Or, at the very least, how many people are in the country LEGALLY. Senator David Vitter (R-LA)…

This is the other shoe of Acorn and why they were involved in the census in the first place in my opinion.

They count them during the census then they register them before the election and fight voter ID in between. Its all about getting democrats elected, not following the oath of office.

They are democratic constituents. So by their way of thinking they probably are serving the public.

However, there’s a problem (at least with the mailed surveys): what is preventing illegal residents from simply ignoring the question?

I don’t think the response rate on citizenship status questions would be much above 10% for those here illegally. Once they receive a survey, it’s all over. They fill out the survey, ignore the citizenship question, and their data goes into the census without any method of separating them out afterward.

For apportioning the vote the legal voters count is needed. For calculating the needs for services the counts for legal and illegal aliens is needed.

{^_^}

I’m saying that all prior census counts have counted people ILLEGAL or not. If we want that to change – fine. But it’s new and we should be trying to make constitutional arguments. If it’s new we need to be honest about that up front and start arguing for why it should change. – dieudonne

Ok, so lets picture a situation. Lets say there were 600,000ish illegal immigrants (which of course there are); and I lived near them (unlikely, but possible). So we get a representative in the House.

And, the district lines get drawn to include me, and 600,000 illegals… correct me if I’m wrong, but you just gave me the only legal vote for a representative.

Do we want to water down districts in such a way that there are fewer voters in some districts than others? Should we reward areas that encourage lawbreaking by giving their voters more clout?

I’m not seeing why encouraging this is a good thing; but I’m clearly missing the reasons for counting them. Are any of them compelling?

We are going to need the help of people outside Nevada to get rid of Dingy “pinky” Reid.

Jvette on October 15, 2009 at 1:09 PM

Here I am. How can I help? (Besides “Ten for Tark”, that is — I’m happy to chip in $10 or more as necessary.)

Count the illegals, then substract their numbers from each corresponding district’s total.

Next.

Christien on October 15, 2009 at 12:47 PM

Nice. I like.

nominate this for dumbest HA comment of the day thus far.

crr6 on October 15, 2009 at 12:35 PM

Seeing as you’re a liberal, I’ll take that as meaning you don’t have an answer. Typical liberal reply, when someone makes a point you can’t counter, ridicule them while laughing off the real question in order to avoid being cornered.

In fact, as Senator Bennett points out, all that really needs to happen is to print an additional sheet for the new question and include in in the packets, which would result in much lower extra costs.

Bing. A single sheet or half sheet. “Document your citizenship”. Give me a break, Jazz.

We should count dead people who were buried too, since technically they are still citizens, just not very active.

Bishop on October 15, 2009 at 11:47 AM

The ultimate ‘silent majority’

Would California’s illegals have amounted to 3.2 million? That would be the upper reaches of estimates for illegal immigrants in the Golden State, but probably not outside the realm of possibility.

Anyone who lives in California knows that 3.2 million is well within the realm of possibility.

so lets get states to pass laws requiring ID we already possess (state issued birth cert., driver’s license, or passport) to avoid voter fraud. IMO, we don’t need another ID, and the distinction b/w state and federal is important.

Firefly_76 on October 15, 2009 at 1:10 PM

Ditto!
Here in ND we have to show our license to vote.
I have no problem with that. Even if the town I vote in has less than 1000 people-we still show our licenses-bcs we believe only legal citizens should be able to vote.
We also have problems with out of state landowners sometimes coming in here & trying to vote on local issues- another reason to require proof of ID.