During consideration of the “Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024” (H.R. 4366), Senator Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) offered an amendment to “require that the census determine basic population statistics like the number of citizens, noncitizens, and illegal aliens that live in this country, and … require that only U.S. citizens be counted in determining the number of House seats and electoral votes that each State gets,” as he explained on the Senate floor.
The Senate rejected Hagerty’s amendment on March 8, 2024 by a vote of 45 to 51 (Roll Call 83). We have assigned pluses to the yeas because the purpose of the U.S. Census is to determine the allotment of congressional seats and Electoral College votes for each state. Illegal aliens, who are not U.S. citizens, should not be counted toward determining those numbers. Furthermore, changing the demographics of a congressional district or state also changes the voting patterns of those areas.
