Filed under: duh.
Politico has an article up today even the title of which is sure to ruffle all the right feathers, arguing that illegal immigration could be a, if not the, deciding factor in the 2016 election.
Illegal immigrants—along with other noncitizens without the right to vote—may pick the 2016 presidential winner. Thanks to the unique math undergirding the Electoral College, the mere presence of 11-12 million illegal immigrants and other noncitizens here legally may enable them to swing the election from Republicans to Democrats
The reasoning is mathematical in nature. It’s a matter of the electoral college, that bugaboo that gets under people’s skin every four years and then generally forgotten about until the next election. In this case, the problem is that the shift in the size and location of the population may result in a shift electoral votes.
The distribution of these 435 seats is not static: they are reapportioned every ten years to reflect the population changes found in the census. That reallocation math is based on the relative “whole number of persons in each state,” as the formulation in the 14th Amendment has it. When this language was inserted into the U.S. Constitution, the concept of an “illegal immigrant,” as the term is defined today, had no meaning. Thus the census counts illegal immigrants and other noncitizens equally with citizens. Since the census is used to determine the number of House seats apportioned to each state, those states with large populations of illegal immigrants and other noncitizens gain extra seats in the House at the expense of states with fewer such “whole number of persons.”
This hardly requires further explanation for Right Scoop readers. It should be obvious that the concentration of illegal immigrants in Dem-controlled districts and blue states presents a huge problem. The authors go on to list specific changes in electoral composition that could turn the election and it is not pretty.
“Though they can’t cast an actual ballot,” the authors state, “we effectively allow noncitizens to have an indirect, and possibly decisive, say in choosing the President.”
The whole article is worth reading. Especially if you’re looking for a stomach ache on a rainy Saturday.