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[hector13]

‘cause it doesn’t work for us! /naïveté

[wierd]

In relation to the "Switch the legal teams!" tactic by orange shitler, A federal judge just told them "no."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/09/politics/federal-judge-doj-census-legal-team/index.html

[Qassius]

Maybe I'm just ignorant, but the citizenship question kinda makes sense. If the point of the census is for apportionment of votes and representatives, wouldn't we want to know whether the people that are being recorded are American citizens and therefore eligible voters? It's not a question of whether someone is an illegal immigrant, there are plenty of legal immigrants who would say no as well.

[wierd]

The census is also used for a wide swath of other purposes, including but not limited to, evaluating needs in population centers for bonds and other funding for infrastructure, by evaluating use patterns, determining if more public health funding is needed in certain areas, etc.

Throwing "citizenship" status, on top of that, gives a hot knife for people that have a boner for making poor people suffer to go cauterizing public funding in places with large immigrant populations that are still using those services, and need those services to survive, among other horrors.


On the face of it, it makes sense to judge how much of a population are indeed citizens, so that districting is properly done; There's a problem there too though. The GOP is the fucking fox trying to guard the henhouse on that. (Seriously, the most egregious instances of gerrymandering have been done by the GOP.)


The issue is not necessarily the question itself, but the REASON for asking it.  Hence the litigation.

[Lord Shonus]

More importantly, a lot of full citizens are likely to find the question threatening in the current political environment for some reason. These people are highly likely not to answer the census at all, leading to a lot of areas being undercounted for representation.

[Frumple]

We actually have shit that asks about citizenship, anyway. There's other national surveys besides the main census.

Beyond that, at pretty much goddamn no point in the history of the census has the point of the thing been to enumerate citizens. It's always been a tool to identify raw number of bodies as accurately as possible, and pretty much anything that gets in the way of that is undesirable.

We're aware and the bloody GOP has been aware since day one adding a citizenship question to the thing would get in the way of that, up to and including depressing numbers even among actual citizens (which is zero surprise when the GOP's jackbooted asshattery has been shitting on them as well as migrants of all stripes).

Far as I can recall the Constitution doesn't apportion representatives based on number of citizens, anyway. The article that leads to the census itself just mentions free persons, untaxed indians, and "others", since they apparently didn't have the balls to call slaves slaves. Citizenship wasn't on the menu to begin with (and gods, why would they even give a flying fuck about immigration status at the point the thing was written? Most of the folks writing it would have been first or second generation immigrants themselves), and considering the amount of non-citizens (documented and otherwise) representatives are supposed to be governing over and otherwise, y'know, representing, it probably shouldn't be.

[wierd]

Originalism of intent (concerning government structure) is a two edged sword though.  For instance, the original intent was for the various states to be more like the member nations of the EU are; Mostly autonomous, with only broad-spectrum federal oversight governing trade and external political matters.

We have deviated pretty strongly from such originalism, for reasons that are too various to give proper number to.


This is not to be taken that I in any way support the GOP's agendas here, they are scum when it comes to this shit. (their methods are basically straight out of eastern bloc nation handbooks on creating false narratives then building cherry picked 'evidence' to support, so that they can get their way.)

However, when it comes to representation, unless you want to bring back the 3/5 compromise or some shit, some distinction between people with the right to vote (citizens) and those that do not (migrants that hold green cards, and illegal migrants) needs to be made. You can only do that with such enumeration.  It sucks, but you can't wave that away, without opening the floodgates to foreign nationals being given voter powers. (and that's dangerous as shit.)

[Cthulhu]

Just get rid of voting and have an annual lottery:  10 citizens, 5 non-citizen residents.  They make executive decisions on a majority vote and can have whatever they want for one year.  Then at the end we sacrifice them and use their blood to water the symbolic tree of liberty.

[JoshuaFH]

Perhaps it's time to cash in on the Battle Royale craze and drop all 100 members of the Senate onto a small desert island, last one standing gets to be the President no-questions-asked.

[EnigmaticHat]

Far as I can recall the Constitution doesn't apportion representatives based on number of citizens, anyway.

House of representatives is proportional by population.  In theory.  In practice a state with a really tiny population would get disproportionate representation but I don't know if any are that small.

Edit: in fact looking it up it could potentially be unfair towards really small states if they're right below the population threshold for their second delegate.  Considering we have 435 delegates for 50 states this isn't a common problem

[Naturegirl1999]

Perhaps it's time to cash in on the Battle Royale craze and drop all 100 members of the Senate onto a small desert island, last one standing gets to be the President no-questions-asked.

Meanwhile, a member of Congress writes this down and passes it around

[wierd]

Far as I can recall the Constitution doesn't apportion representatives based on number of citizens, anyway.

House of representatives is proportional by population.  In theory.  In practice a state with a really tiny population would get disproportionate representation but I don't know if any are that small.

Again, the 3/5 compromise was supposed to deal with the "Citizenship" (or rather, 'right to vote') question.  They still counted, but only at 3/5 the value of a person with bonafide right to vote. (Remember, women also counted in the 3/5 compromise, because they could not vote.) Instead of asking for citizenship, they prejudiced based on gender and race. We still ask gender and race, but those things have no bearing on right to vote status.  Citizenship does.

Again, I DO NOT SUPPORT the GOP's bullshit.

However, keeping fucking Russia from sending a shitload of "Tourists" during census and election seasons to fuck with our electorial processes seems sensible, given that they have been meddling in it in all kinds of other ways already.  Opening the door to noncitizens enables that kind of bullshit. 


I should probably further clarify--  3/5 compromise is NOT IDEAL.  This is not meant to read as an endorsement;  Rather, only a reminder that while in the past the topic of citizenship did not appear in the process, it was because the function was performed in other ways, which the 3/5 compromise embodied.

We do need some form of protection in this area, just what a suitable one would be, I have no real clue. Only that "Does not matter!" is dangerous levels of stupid.

[sluissa]

Double check your history, weird.

Pretty sure the 3/5 count was ONLY for slaves or people otherwise indentured or imprisoned.

Women who didn't fall into those categories were counted as a whole person for representation. (I do think there was some reading of the rules that would allow a state to not count women, if they so choose, but that would result in them having less representation in congress, so as far as I know, none of them chose to cut off their own nose to spite their own face like  that).

It also had NOTHING to do with citizenship or the right to vote. It was all about representation which was based entirely on population count. Not on citizen count or the count of people who could vote. Total population. The reason for this being is that the rules voted on by representatives still affect the people in that state whether they're citizens with the right to vote or not.

[Trekkin]

Double check your history, weird.

Pretty sure the 3/5 count was ONLY for slaves or people otherwise indentured or imprisoned.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

So, yes, wierd is wrong, but indentures were actually counted as full persons. (That's the "Term of Years" part.)

It was also not about citizenship, but about representation; specifically, it was there to make counting slaves as 3/5 of a person for taxation purposes more palatable to Southern states, having been recycled from a failed amendment to the Articles of Confederation.

[wierd]

So it is--

Still does not obviate the need to ensure foreign agencies with axes to grind (Russia, and more recently, China-- due to the recent tariff bullshit) cannot inflate numbers in areas to influence electoral representation in ways they find favorable.

That means *some* form of restriction against non-citizens (or at least, non-residents) needs to exist.  For the same reasons I understand this question cannot be on the census (Namely, the GOP being assholes that just love to fuck people that are not rich, white, and psychotic like they are), I would be very very careful addressing it, but that does not mean "Does not matter!" is a valid response.

Perhaps something like-- "If this person is older than 5 years old, have they resided in the united states for a period of 5 years or more, consecutively?"

This skates around citizenship entirely, and puts a damper on such electoral engineering.