WASHINGTON, D.C. – Third District Kansas congresswoman Sharice Davids joined congressional Democrats in a party line vote in an attempt to continue counting illegal immigrants in the U.S. Census, a move that affects hundreds of millions of dollars in federal spending and alters the apportionment of congressional seats as well as the U.S. Electoral College.
Democrats failed to stop the measure by four votes in the 206-202 tally, though the Bill itself is unlikely to ever have a hearing or pass the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate. Eleven Republicans and eleven Democrats did not vote on the measure.
H.R. 7109 would add a box to the U.S. Census form to be checked if a person filling it out is not a legal citizen of the United states. Both Citizen and non-citizen tallies would be reported to federal census authorities and made available in the same way that present census data is tallied.
President Trump attempted to end the commingling of citizen and non-citizen population reporting by ordering the U.S. Census to exclude all non-citizens from apportionment totals. But one of President Biden’s first acts in office was to reverse this policy, at the same time that he dropped restrictions at the southern border to eventually allow an estimated 10 million additional illegal immigrants into the country since 2021. Davids has been a traditionally dependable vote for President Biden on most all policy issues ever since Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
Davids’ office did not address questions about her vote or the impact of the bill’s context, but said she was committed to immigration reform.
“Rep. Davids is committed to working across party lines to pass bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform that addresses the pressing issues at our southern border and stops the illegal flow of fentanyl,” said her press contact Zac Donely. “She’s urging Speaker Johnson to call a vote on the bipartisan immigration framework agreed to in the Senate.”
Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at the conservative think tank The Heritage Center, told Fox News in February the citizenship question was important because congressional and electoral college apportionment is based on the number of residents, as determined by the census. Currently, Census includes illegal aliens and other noncitizens as residents. Consequently, a state can gain extra congressional districts and representation in Congress thanks to the presence of a large population that isn’t legally allowed to vote. Since the number of congressional seats is limited to 435, this additional representation comes at the expense of other states.
“This warped representation is carried over into the Electoral College,” Ries said, “where each state is allocated a number of votes equal to the number of senators and representatives in its congressional delegation.”
Also at play are massive amounts of federal funding distributed to localities through various agencies and as grants to non-profit organizations. Many of those non-profits tacitly promote leftist ideology and vote harvesting for Democrat candidates for office.
Dane Hicks is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, VA. He is the author of novels "The Skinning Tree" and "A Whisper For Help." As publisher of the Anderson County Review in Garnett, KS., he is a recipient of the Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award as well as more than 60 awards for excellence in news, editorial and photography.
