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COUNTING THE VOTE: SHOULD ONLY U.S. CITIZENS BE INCLUDED IN APPORTIONING OUR

ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERALISM

AND THE CENSUS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

DECEMBER 6, 2005

Serial No. 109–119

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERALISM AND THE CENSUS

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio, Chairman

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

——— ———

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

JOHN CUADERES, Staff Director

URSULA WOJCIECHOWSKI, Professional Staff Member

JULIANA FRENCH, Clerk

ADAM BORDES, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on December 6, 2005 ........................................................................ 1

Statement of:

Bensen, Clark, consultant and publisher, Polidata Co.; Steven Camarota,

director of research, Center for Immigration Studies; and Lawrence

Gonzalez, Washington director, National Association of Latino Elected

and Appointed Officials ................................................................................ 28

Bensen, Clark ............................................................................................ 28

Camarota, Steven ...................................................................................... 41

Gonzalez, Lawrence ................................................................................... 53

Miller, Hon. Candice S., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Michigan .................................................................................................... 10

Prewitt, Kenneth, Carnegie professor of public affairs, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University; Johnny H. Killian,

senior specialist, American constitutional law, American Law Division,

Congressional Research Service; James G. Gimpel, professor of government, University of Maryland, College Park; Andrew C. Spiropoulos,

professor of law, Oklahoma City University School of Law; and Nina

Perales, Southwestern regional counsel, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund ........................................................................ 71

Gimpel, James G. ...................................................................................... 88

Killian, Johnny H. ..................................................................................... 82

Perales, Nina ............................................................................................. 120

Prewitt, Kenneth ....................................................................................... 71

Spiropoulos, Andrew C. ............................................................................. 111

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Bensen, Clark, consultant and publisher, Polidata Co., prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 31

Camarota, Steven, director of research, Center for Immigration Studies,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 43

Gimpel, James G., professor of government, University of Maryland, College Park, prepared statement of ................................................................ 90

Gonzalez, Lawrence, Washington director, National Association of Latino

Elected and Appointed Officials, prepared statement of ........................... 55

Killian, Johnny H., senior specialist, American constitutional law, American Law Division, Congressional Research Service, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 84

Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 7

Miller, Hon. Candice S., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Michigan, prepared statement of ............................................................. 14

Perales, Nina, Southwestern regional counsel, Mexican American Legal

Defense and Educational Fund, prepared statement of ............................ 122

Prewitt, Kenneth, Carnegie professor of public affairs, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 75

Sanchez, Hon. Linda T., a Representative in Congress from the State

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 135

Spiropoulos, Andrew C., professor of law, Oklahoma City University

School of Law, prepared statement of ......................................................... 113

Turner, Hon. Michael R., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Ohio, prepared statement of .................................................................... 3

(1)

COUNTING THE VOTE: SHOULD ONLY U.S.

CITIZENS BE INCLUDED IN APPORTIONING

OUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES?

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERALISM AND THE CENSUS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:57 a.m., in room

2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Michael R. Turner

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Turner, Dent, Foxx, and Maloney.

Also present: Representatives Miller of Michigan, and Linda T.

Sanchez of California.

Staff present: John Cuaderes, staff director; Ursula

Wojciechowski, professional staff member; Juliana French, clerk;

John Heroux, counsel; Peter Neville, fellow; Adam Bordes and

Mark Stephenson, minority professional staff members; and Jean

Gosa, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. TURNER. Call to order the Government Reform Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census. A quorum being present, this

hearing of the Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census will

come to order.

Welcome to the subcommittee’s oversight hearing entitled,

‘‘Counting the Vote: Should Only U.S. Citizens Be Included in Apportioning Our Elected Representatives?’’ We are here today to discuss a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would change

how the Census Bureau determines the enumeration for the purposes of apportioning the U.S. House of Representatives.

The 14th amendment states, ‘‘Representatives of the House shall

be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State,

excluding Indians not taxed.’’ In other words, all individuals residing in the United States on Census Day, except for nontaxed Indians must be enumerated to determine the apportionment base.

The issue of whether noncitizens should be included in the apportionment base has received considerable congressional attention

in the past. In 1940, for example, Representative Celler of New

York said on the floor of the House, ‘‘The Constitution says that all

persons shall be counted. I cannot quarrel with the Founding Fathers. They said that all should be counted. The only way we can

exclude anyone would be to pass a constitutional amendment.’’

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Most legal scholars agree with the view of Representative Celler

that any attempt to exclude noncitizens from enumeration must be

accomplished by a constitutional amendment. That is what Representative Candice Miller has proposed by introduction of House

Joint Resolution 53. This measure is a straightforward proposal to

distinguish citizens of the United States from the total populations

for purposes of determining the apportionment base.

I am willing to wager that many, if not most, Americans think

that is exactly how it is done today and would be shocked to learn

that noncitizens, especially those in the country illegally, have an

impact on apportioning the membership of the House of Representatives.

Regardless of possible popular belief, there may be some very

compelling reasons why the Framers used the word ‘‘persons’’ instead of the word ‘‘citizens’’ or ‘‘voters’’ when they crafted the 14th

amendment. The primary question before us today is if H.J. Res.

53 is adopted by Congress and ratified by the States, how would

things be different?

We have several witnesses today that may provide the subcommittee some insight into what the political landscape would

have looked like in the past if the census excluded noncitizens,

what it might look like after the 2010 census if H.J. Res. 53 is

adopted. I think you will find this testimony most interesting.

This hearing has been structured in such a way that the subcommittee will first hear from Congresswoman Miller so that we

she may describe her proposal. Subsequent to her testimony, she

will join us as a member of the subcommittee in listening and questioning the other witnesses.

The subcommittee will then hear from a second panel comprised

of two esteemed demographers, Clark Bensen, a consultant and

publisher from the Polidata Co., and Steven Camarota, Director of

Research for the Center for Immigration Studies. Joining these two

will be Lawrence Gonzalez representing the National Association of

Latino elected and appointed officials.

In our third panel we will hear from several legal and academic

scholars including the former director of the Census Bureau, Dr.

Ken Prewitt. Joining him will be James Gimpel, professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland; Johnny Killian, senior specialist in constitutional law in the American Law

Division of the Congressional Research Service; and Andrew

Spiropoulos, professor of law at the Oklahoma City University

School of Law. Finally, we will hear from Nina Perales, Southwestern regional counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and

Education Fund.

With that, my colleagues on the subcommittee and I welcome you

Mrs. Miller and we look forward to your testimony. We look forward to the testimony of all our distinguished witnesses today and

thank them for their preparation and time in participating today.

With that, I would like to recognize our ranking member Mrs.

Maloney.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Michael R. Turner follows:]

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Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Chairman Turner, and I really very

much appreciate your fairness in handling this hearing, and I always enjoy working with you. I particularly want to thank you for

the hearing you held recently in New York City on the community

development block grants and look forward to the passage of that

report before Congress.

But today, unfortunately, we have before us a truly reckless constitutional proposal which on one hand runs counter to our American ideals and on the other hand makes little practical sense.

Were it to become part of the Constitution, it would be the second

amendment in our history which did not expand individual liberties. The other was prohibition. The amendment shrinks liberty

and deliberately blinds the national government to the needs of

millions upon millions of Americans.

This amendment reverses the explicit intent of the Framers that

representation in the House should be based on population and

that a periodic count of residents was the only legitimate means to

assure equitable representation based on population in a changing

nation.

The Census Act of 1790, introduced by James Madison and

signed into law by George Washington, called for an enumeration

of the, ‘‘inhabitants of the United States.’’ This was deliberate. We

were then and have always been a nation of immigrants. Indeed,

seven signers of the Declaration of Independence and eight signers

of our Constitution were foreign born. Noncitizens fought for liberty

in the Revolutionary War for America and in every war since.

Today, 35,000 noncitizens serve on active duty and 8,000 more enlist every year.

Most noncitizens are here legally. They are legal, permanent

residents and visa holders who pay local, State and Federal taxes.

The Framers decided that only citizens would have the right to

choose their Representatives through the right to vote. They just

as firmly intended that, ‘‘all inhabitants,’’ of the country be counted

for purposes of apportioning the seats of Congress. They mandated

a census of the entire population to prevent the, ‘‘manipulation of

political power and taxation.’’

The census is itself one of the many vital checks and balances

embedded in our constitutional form of government which are at

the root of why it has endured so long. This amendment before us

today, however, turns the census into a political gadget.

As we will hear today in testimony, the census has become a

weapon in today’s political debate on immigration. Proponents of

this amendment will point to recent growth in the percentage of

foreign-born residents to make a case that this has somehow, ‘‘diluted voting representation of nonborder States.’’ The truth is that

compared to the post-Civil War counts, for instance, this percentage is historically low.

As we will hear today, this amendment is a management nightmare. It requires the Census Bureau first to count everyone, then

for the first time in our Nation’s history, ask everyone for proof

that they are a citizen, only for the purpose of going back and removing people from the count. That will be a huge cost in time and

taxpayer money.

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Imagine when proponents of this amendment demand that residents show proof of citizenship. The end result will be a national

ID card. And let’s not sugar coat the effects of this amendment; it

will discriminate, it will disproportionately exclude Hispanics, who

make up the lion’s share of our Nation’s most recent immigration.

To politically manipulate the count and generate undercounts in

border States to benefit interior States is discrimination.

Some of our friends on the other side of the aisle profess to prefer

a limited Federal Government, so why would they propose a big

government, expensive, time-consuming, invasive and last, but certainly not least, discriminatory amendment to our Constitution? It

is simple. This amendment is about shifting power. By artificially

altering the population in certain areas, the consequence, of course,

is an inaccurate census count.

A government that spends its resources in the wrong places,

where it would skew representation, will result in a loss of faith

in leadership.

This is about sacrificing 210 years of constitutional practice and

history merely to increase short-term power at the expense of millions of Americans and those that will soon be Americans in our

country.

I am opposed to this amendment. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Mrs. Maloney, I want to thank you for your participation today. You have made valuable contributions to this committee, and I appreciate your viewpoint.

Today, this hearing, as we look forward, is informational, and I

do believe that many are not aware of how apportionment is accomplished; and your viewpoint is going to be valuable as we educate people of the processes and perhaps the impacts of this constitutional amendment.

Mrs. MALONEY. I appreciate it is educational and not—thank

you.

Mr. TURNER. I next would like to recognize our vice chair, Charlie Dent.

Mr. DENT. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding

this very important hearing to examine the possible impact of Congresswoman Miller’s proposed joint resolution to amend the Constitution to mandate that only U.S. citizens be counted in census

data for apportionment purposes. It is crucial that we review and

evaluate this proposed legislation in that it would have a widespread impact on the Census Bureau, Electoral College, number of

seats in the House, and basic weight of an individual’s vote.

While I deeply respect the Congresswoman’s initiative in attempting to illuminate and correct the problem of dilution of U.S.

citizens’ votes, I think it is also crucial that we take a realistic look

at the possible difficulties and costs that may arise as a result of

implementing H.J. Res. 53. I look forward to the testimony of my

esteemed colleague, Representative Miller, as well as the other witnesses today.

Thanks, Chairman Turner, for holding this hearing.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you. Now it is my honor to recognize for her

testimony the Honorable Congresswoman Candice Miller.

STATEMENT OF HON. CANDICE S. MILLER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you. Thank so much, Mr. Chairman and

Representative Maloney, Vice Chair Representative Dent as well.

I appreciate the fact that you all come with an open mind to this

issue, and I certainly appreciate your having a hearing on a piece

of legislation that I think is very important to protect the integrity

of our democratic system, quite frankly.

Mr. Chairman, over the last several decades our Nation has had

a rather dramatic shift in the population, and as a result of that,

a shift in the congressional representation as well, principally from

the Northeast and the Midwest, to the southern and western regions of our Nation. There are, of course, a number of reasons for

population shifts.

Many people just prefer warmer climates and they might retire

into some of those areas permanently. Some people are looking for

job opportunities, and they may move to cities to pursue them.

There are certainly many legitimate reasons for people to move to

the South and West, and I strongly believe in the concept of representational democracy, so it is entirely appropriate for congressional seats to move along with the population shifts so that Americans are properly represented in the halls of Congress.

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But as I examined this issue, I came across what I thought was

a rather surprising thing, quite startling actually. The fact is that

illegal immigration or people who are in our country illegally or are

not legal citizens of our Nation are being counted and apportioned

congressional representation just the same as every legal American

citizen.

Let us examine how this can possibly be happening. Our Constitution, of course, requires the government to undertake a census

every 10 years. One of the many purposes of the census is to distribute seats in the Congress amongst the various States. Those

with greater population receive more seats than those with less.

Simple concept. This reapportionment of seats is meant to balance

as close as is practical the concept of one man, one vote.

The 14th amendment of our Constitution states that in the census that all persons must be counted. All persons, of course, include

every man, every woman, rich, poor, Black, White, every person.

However, many people would be surprised to know that it also

means citizens and noncitizens, including illegal immigrants.

In fulfilling its constitutional obligation, the U.S. Census Bureau

counts every person whether they are in this country legally or not.

Those same numbers, which include both legal and illegal immigrants, are then used to determine congressional representation. So

even if you broke the laws of our country to come here, we give you

as much representation to impact our laws as any legal American.

So for all practical purposes, when we are voting in Congress

about issues like national security or border security or illegal immigration, we allow illegal immigrants to influence the outcome of

those votes. We disenfranchise our own American citizens by allowing illegal immigrants to be counted for the purposes of congressional representation in the same identical way that we count legal

citizens.

Just allow me to illustrate my point by comparing three different

congressional districts, and let me start with the 10th District of

Michigan, which I am very proud to represent. According to the

2000 census, in the 10th District of Michigan, the census says 97

percent of the residents that live in my district are American citizens; 3 percent are not.

If you look at the entire State of Montana, that has only one congressional district, the census is saying there that 99 percent of the

people in Montana are citizens, less than 1 percent are not.

Let us now consider the congressional district, the 31st District

of California. According to the census, 60 percent of the residents

there are citizens, 40 percent of the residents in this district are

not American citizens, and yet all three, the 10th District of Michigan, the entire State of Montana, and the 31st District of California have the same vote in the U.S. Congress.

Mr. Chairman, as you know, I was a secretary of State in Michigan before I came to Congress. My principal responsibility there

was as an election official, so I do perhaps look at election results

a little more closely than some. And it was while I was looking at

some of the election numbers that this became apparent to me.

There were nearly three times as many voters in my district during the last election cycle as there were in California’s 31st. So a

House candidate in California’s 31st District only needs 56,000

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votes to win a seat in Congress, and yet in my district a winning

candidate would need a minimum of 166,000 votes in order to become a Member of Congress, nearly 50 percent more than the entire vote in California’s 31st.

I think that fundamental fairness suggests that each congressional district should have roughly the same number of citizens

since only citizens are able to vote. A district that has tens or hundred of thousands of illegal immigrants dilutes the voice of American citizens in other areas of the Nation, and in my opinion, that

is simply not fair.

Another effect of these congressional seats shifting to States with

larger noncitizen populations is that recipient States have a larger

voice in Congress and, in fact, throughout the entire Federal Government. By having an inflated population, a greater number of

Representatives in the House, it opens doors for increased Federal

funding in those States. It might actually give some of these States

an incentive to encourage illegal immigration.

If only citizens had been counted for the purposes of reapportionment, CRS estimates show that it would have had an impact on

how nine congressional seats were allocated during the last congressional reallocation. By the Census Bureau’s estimate, California is home to an estimated 5.4 million noncitizens. The State of

California would have been allocated six fewer seats in the House

of Representatives. Three other States would have had one less

seat: Florida, New York and Texas.

Nine States would have picked up those seats. Those States are

Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma,

Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Utah. In fact, if you think about the

six additional congressional seats that have been given to California just because of its illegal immigrant or its noncitizen, however

you want to categorize it, population, it also gives those noncitizens

an equal or greater voice in the Electoral College and, thus, the

Presidential race than States that have six or less Members of Congress.

Those States that have less to say than illegal immigrants are

Alaska, Delaware, Arkansas, the District of Columbia, Hawaii,

Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada,

New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South

Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming. Fully 20

States and the District of Columbia have less to say, who is elected

the President of the United States, than do the illegal immigrants

that live in the State of California, most of whom, many of them,

broke laws to get into our Nation.

Mr. Chairman, there are a number of people who you will hear

from shortly in the next panel who will tell this committee not to

concern itself with this, that we are a compassionate nation and we

need to protect everybody and need to allow this to continue. I do

not believe that we should. And for those reasons I have introduced

House Joint Resolution 53. This is a constitutional amendment

that specifies that the congressional representation shall be apportioned based on the number of citizens, not persons, a really simple

change to the 14th amendment.

The right to vote is certainly one of our most cherished freedoms.

We should not allow that right to be diluted for any reason. UnforVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:38 Mar 28, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\26074.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tunately, our porous border and lax enforcement of immigration

laws are doing just that. Citizens in States with fewer immigrants,

legal and illegal, are disadvantaged. This is about fundamental

fairness and, again, the American ideal: One man, or maybe one

woman, one vote.

I don’t want anyone to take away the impression that I am antiimmigration. I am a first-generation Scot, and in my district and

in my entire State we have immigrants that came from across the

globe to seek a better life for themselves. And I will tell you that

my constituents who have followed the laws to become American

citizens are the first people that think that this is outrageous and

want to see it changed. They cherish their citizenship so deeply

and the blessing it bestows on them that they more than any others do not want to have their voice diluted.

I appreciate your interest in this issue, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Candice S. Miller follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Congresswoman Miller, I appreciate the fact that

you have highlighted this issue. I think we are all aware that when

the constitutional convention came together there was much heated

discussion that resulted in the structure that we have today of the

House and the Senate and the allocation of Representatives by

State based upon the discussion of how do we balance the issue of

influence of large States versus small States. There was a grave

concern that those in small States would have less of a voice or

representation in Congress and have perhaps their interests overridden.

With your illustration of the fact that noncitizens in California

representing six additional electors both in the Electoral College

that elects our President, and Representatives, your illustration

that 20 States have either less or equal representation on the national level to those seats gives a great illustration that this is an

issue that goes to the heart of the discussion of the constitutional

convention of the balance of States and their power.

I certainly think that your comments do not sound anti-immigrant; they sound citizen versus noncitizen as an issue of allocating

the vote. It certainly doesn’t address the issue of whether or not

anyone is welcome, but as you address the issue of balancing of

power between the States—something that was very important in

structuring our government—it becomes part of that discussion.

Prior to serving in Congress you served as secretary of State and

had responsibility for administration of the electoral system in

Michigan. One of the criticisms that we hear of this proposal—obviously, one is the issue of cost, which I don’t find too compelling because, obviously, if we are trying to bolster the rights of citizens,

cost is certainly not something that would be a compelling argument.

But the nightmare of the administration of the process, I think,

is one that does need to be addressed: How would we accomplish

the determination of someone’s status as citizen or noncitizen? In

the testimony that you have and the testimony that we have from

most of the witnesses, they make references to the number of citizens or noncitizens that are currently counted in the system. Someone obviously has taken an effort from the data that we have had

to ascertain where citizens or noncitizens are located.

Could you speak for a moment to what you have learned and

your thoughts on the processes of how we might be able to then

be successful in doing a census which is under the jurisdiction of

this committee and determine citizenship and noncitizenship?

Mrs. MILLER. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I obviously don’t work for the

Census Bureau, so I couldn’t tell you what the entire impact would

be, but I do not believe that this resolution that I am putting forward should really be viewed numerically in the terms of what the

costs actually are. As you say, it is about fairness and protecting

our citizens’ rights.

However, right now, the Census Bureau is already estimating

without verifying how many citizens and how many noncitizens. In

fact, CRS prepared a report for me, detailing for every congressional district in the entire Nation the numbers based on the last

census of total population, native born, naturalized citizens, their

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total, the percentage of resident population, noncitizen population,

and then the total vote cast in the 2002 general election.

The Census Bureau is already doing much of this work without

verification. If they just started with the information that they already have, I don’t know why that would be a problem for them.

I do think though, it is very important that we do count every

person. I am not suggesting that we stop counting everybody here.

It is important for us to try to get a handle on what our population

is, citizens, noncitizens, etc. I am only speaking to the process of

congressional representation, so I am not suggesting that the Census Bureau change their processes not to count illegal immigrants

or noncitizens. Those categories must be counted and have to be

taken into consideration for a number of other reasons.

I am also not suggesting that my proposal go to States or local

municipalities. This is only about Federal congressional representation. The States would be allowed to continue as they want.

I would like to mention the REAL ID Act that the Congress has

recently passed. I was very involved in that particular piece of legislation. Not only as former secretary of state in Michigan did I

have election responsibilities, I also had responsibilities with

issuing drivers’ licenses. We were 1 of 10 States that continued to

issue driver’s license and State identification cards to known illegal

immigrants; even though we knew they were in the country illegally, we had to keep giving them a driver’s license, which I believe

is very counterintuitive with the kinds of challenges that are facing

our Nation today.

But the REAL ID Act is going to address that. Now legal presence will be required and every State, even before the REAL ID

card, the DMVs and secretaries of state are required to ask for

your Social Security number before they issue you a driver’s license

or State identification card.

So I do think that some of this verification technology is going

to be in place and I would speculate that it will be an assist to the

Census Bureau as they look into what the costs actually would be.

Mr. TURNER. Congresswoman Miller, you have proposed this

change by constitutional amendment versus statute.

Is it that you believe that a statute would not be sufficient in

order to be able to effect this change?

Mrs. MILLER. You know, I would prefer to do it by statute because obviously a constitutional amendment is quite a laborious

process; and again, I appreciate the hearing on the issue. Of

course, it requires two-thirds of each body and then three-fifths or

three-quarters of the States for a constitutional amendment, and

we should not change the Constitution by whim; so I recognize the

seriousness of what I am proposing here. However, as we researched this issue, we came across a Harvard Journal of Law and

Public Policy, this was in the Spring of 1999, entitled, ‘‘Losing Control of America’s Future: The Census, Birthright, Citizenship and

Illegal Aliens.’’ They went through this entire process, and at the

very end it said that the thesis of this article is that needed

changes can be accomplished by statute.

They do believe that it could be accomplished by statute. If, however, either change cannot be made in this way without significant

delay because the President, Congress or even the Supreme Court

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believes the Constitution precludes it, then a constitutional amendment should be pursued until ratification is achieved.

Essentially, I came to the same conclusion because I do believe

if we tried to do this by statute, even if we were successful in passing it, we would be facing endless litigation, and so I thought a constitutional amendment would be the most prudent course.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you so much.

Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much for your testimony today,

Congresswoman.

As a Member of Congress, can you describe how your proposal

benefits your State of Michigan?

Mrs. MILLER. Yes. As I mentioned in my testimony, we actually

would probably not have lost one of our seats. Previous to the last

census, Michigan had 16 congressional seats. Currently we have

15, and we are looking in the next census at the distinct possibility

of losing an additional seat. This is not because we have not grown

in population. Many States just like your own of New York, we

have actually had an increase in our population but not at the

same rapid expansion that is happening in the South—Florida, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, California, what have you—particularly

when you factor in the illegal immigration.

Mrs. MALONEY. I have no further questions.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Dent.

Mr. DENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Like you, Congresswoman Miller, I come from a State that has

not grown at a very great rate. In fact, according to the data, in

1960 my State had 27 Members of Congress; today we have 19.

Back in the 1930’s I know we were over 30 Members of Congress.

So really since the 1930’s our representation has been nearly cut

in half.

I would be curious to know how many seats my State has lost

due to noncitizens being counted over these several decades, and

maybe you know what the answer is to Michigan.

According to the data provided to me, my State would pick up

a seat. I would be curious to see how many seats we might not

have lost had noncitizens not been counted. I don’t know if you

have any thoughts on that.

Mrs. MILLER. I have some thoughts. I think it is very unfair

what has happened to all of us.

I am sorry, I don’t have the numbers for your particular State,

but you can see a common element here. And I understand, as I

said at the outset, that we all absolutely believe in representing the

people, the American citizens. That is why we require citizenship

to vote.

I mean, if you took this to its logical conclusion, why even require citizenship in order to vote? Again, as a former chief elections

officer, if we want to protect the rights of illegal immigrants, why

do we even require people to have citizenship to vote? They are already really voting on the floor of the House.

But I do think that we understand why people and population

shifts are occurring. That being said, I have no problem with seats

in the House being apportioned based on population, but I certainly

do have a distinct distaste for the fact that American citizens’, legal

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citizens of America, vote is being diluted because as the population

is shifting and illegal immigration is increasing in some of these

border States.

Mr. DENT. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. We thank Congresswoman Miller. We thank you for

your testimony as panel one, and if you would, please now join us

as we turn to Panel Two. We have two panels that would continue

our discussion of the counting of U.S. citizens and how it impacts

our elected Representatives and what would be the effect if we

only, in that process, counted U.S. citizens.

On panel two we have Mr. Clark Bensen, consultant and publisher, Polidata Co.; Mr. Steven Camarota, director of research,

Center for Immigration Studies; Mr. Lawrence Gonzalez, Washington director of National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

If you would come forward.

Gentlemen, we will begin by swearing in the witnesses of our

second panel. We will swear in the witnesses for the second and

the third panels. Witnesses will notice that there is a timer light

at the witness table. The green light indicates that you should

begin your prepared remarks and the red light indicates that your

time has expired. The yellow light indicates when you will have 1

minute left to conclude your remarks. Each of you will be asked to

summarize your previously submitted written testimony into a 5-

minute presentation.

It is the policy of this committee that the witnesses be sworn in

before they testify. You would please rise and raise your right

hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TURNER. Please let the record show that all witnesses have

responded in the affirmative.

I want to thank each of you for the time that you have taken to

prepare for your testimony here today. We look forward to your

comments and we will begin with Mr. Bensen.

STATEMENTS OF CLARK BENSEN, CONSULTANT AND PUBLISHER, POLIDATA CO.; STEVEN CAMAROTA, DIRECTOR OF

RESEARCH, CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES; AND LAWRENCE GONZALEZ, WASHINGTON DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF LATINO ELECTED AND APPOINTED OFFICIALS

STATEMENT OF CLARK BENSEN

Mr. BENSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to address the possible impacts, mostly the political impacts,

of a noncitizen apportionment.

Mr. TURNER. Can I ask you to move closer to your mic. That way

we can hear you better.

Mr. BENSEN. In addition to the written remarks, there are maps

and tablets on my Web site, Polidata.organization, Polidata.org,

and there were just too many different scenarios to provide all

sorts of handouts here.

Let me first start off by summarizing some of what Congresswoman Miller addressed, which is, the 2000 census actually was

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the culmination of a 6-decades-long shift of the political power in

the country from the Northeast and the Midwest to the South and

the West. This is clearly a trend that is continuing, and in fact,

projections on the 2010 apportionment would indicate that an additional 11 seats would shift from the Northeast to the South and the

West.

At the same time, of course, the noncitizens, as we measured

them in the census, have risen dramatically from, in 1980, about

3 percent to, in 2000, over 6 percent. The distribution, however, of

the noncitizens is not very randomly distributed as it were, and in

fact with the handout over here there are two maps, one of which

is a county-based map, which is this one, which does in fact indicate that a lot of the distribution of the noncitizens is in the border

areas. And it is because of this uneven distribution of the noncitizens, again, as we determine them from the census that in fact this

is a Robin Hood kind of proposal in the sense that we take from

the few and give to the many.

And in fact the first aspect I looked at here was the actual apportionments that have been made over the last few decades and projected out to 2010. And in 1980, 1990 and 2000 it was the same

general trend, which is, very few States—basically, four or five

States——would have lost seats had the apportionment been based

upon noncitizens. And in 2010 it would basically be the same impact.

Before my time runs out, I want to address a couple of issues.

A lot of the issues we will hear several times today, but one of the

impacts, of course, is just briefly the Electoral College. Yes, noncitizens do vote in California because of this, but the overall impact

would be basically not as big a shift because some of the other

States, of course, are Republicans or Democrats, and so in a sense

would have been four extra votes for Bush in 2000 and 2004.

But the other aspect goes to the redistricting elements of it, and

Congresswoman Miller addressed this to some degree. In actuality,

her example is correct even though in reality you should look at

one State at a time. And in California it is a similar situation, in

which case I look at the Presidential results by congressional district.

And this is a project that Polidata has been working on every 4

years for 2 decades, and we look at the total votes in the Presidential election and compare that; and in California it is the same

kind of scenario, which is, you have districts where the average

vote in the Presidential election is three times what the vote is in

the districts that have the smallest number of votes.

Let me summarize by saying that also the overall result for the

House is that if you add up all the districts based upon the Presidential votes, 50 percent of the Members are elected by 42 percent

of the voters in the country.

The other element I want to address is again the accuracy of the

data and the impact upon the Bureau. And as we know, it would

be a short-form item now; and I am concerned about not only the

accuracy of the responses, but the fact we may have nonresponse

followup, which is a very costly element of the entire process.

And more importantly, since I represent people who actually do

the redistricting, we need good data, and I see this as a potential

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problem from not only the Bureau standpoint of their reputation,

but also the inevitable litigation over the whole process.

And the more important question from a redistricting standpoint

is, if we in fact exclude citizens for apportionment, what happens

at the State and local level? There is some rationale that in fact

whatever is used for apportionment at the local level must basically follow the census, but that is because that has always been

determined to be that it is basically based on population.

I believe some of the other panelists, the scholars panel, I guess,

will address this to some degree as well. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bensen follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Mr. Camarota.

STATEMENT OF STEVEN CAMAROTA

Mr. CAMAROTA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the

committee. I would like to thank you for having me testify on immigration and reapportionment or apportionment.

The United States, of course, is currently experiencing the largest sustained wave of immigration with 11⁄2 million legal and illegal immigrants settling here. The total foreign-born was 31 million

in the 2000 census, including both citizens and noncitizens. Data

from 2005 show that it has probably reached about 36 million.

Now, there is an unfortunate tendency to see this immigration

and see immigrants one-dimensionally, as only workers or as only

users of public services and welfare. But immigrants are much

more than this; they are human beings. As a result, they have

wide-ranging economic, cultural, demographic, national security

and political effects on our country.

If you take nothing else away from my testimony, it should be

that allowing in large numbers of people, even as guest workers or

just tolerating widespread illegal immigration, has broad-ranging

effects on our society that go well beyond the usual discussion

about jobs and welfare and so forth. And one of those impacts is

on the reapportionment of House seats.

Let me give you some of the overall numbers quickly. The 2000

census showed roughly 19 million noncitizens. Most estimates suggest that 7 or 8 million of these noncitizens were illegal aliens and

roughly 1 million were on long-term temporary visas. All of these

noncitizens have consequences for apportionment because, as we

have already discussed, seats are apportioned to each State in the

House based on its total population, and counting the noncitizens

and, of course, noncitizens are not evenly distributed throughout

the United States.

Let me give you one statistic. In the 2000 census, half of all noncitizens lived in just three States. Now, in a report published by

the Center for Immigration Studies, we calculated the impact, as

others have talked about here as well; the report is available over

on the table. My weather-beaten table over here that didn’t survive

the trip to Capitol Hill shows the States that lost. We will run

through them briefly.

The inclusion of noncitizens in the census caused Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin each lost a seat that

they had prior to 2000, while Montana, Kentucky and Utah each

failed to gain a seat they otherwise would have had. We also found

that of these nine seats, four were redistributed by the illegal

aliens. Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, and Montana each had one

fewer seat because of the inclusion of illegal aliens in the census.

The big winner, of course, is California.

Now, because of family relationships and existing cultural ties,

immigrants will tend to remain concentrated for some time. They

will slowly spread out in the country. Now, that fact along with the

fact that immigration levels remain so high means that the noncitizen population is going to also remain high for some time, assuming we don’t change U.S. immigration policy or begin to enforce our

immigration laws.

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Now, a 2002 report, for example, found that if all noncitizens

who are eligible to naturalize, that is, to become citizens, were naturalized tomorrow, there would still be 15 million noncitizens in

the United States. Now, one of the key controversies associated

with apportionment caused by noncitizens, or reapportionment

caused by the presence of noncitizens, is this fact: It clearly takes

away representation from States composed largely of citizens.

Of the nine States that lost seats because of the presence of noncitizens in other States, only 1 in 50 residents was a noncitizen in

2000; in contrast, 1 in 7 residents is a noncitizen in California, the

big winner. As a result, as we have already talked about, it often

takes relatively few votes to win some of these noncitizen heavy

districts. In fact, it only took about 68,000 votes to win the average

California district in 2002, where it took over 100,000 votes to win

the average district in the States that lost seats.

Now, I will leave the constitutional issues to others. Let me

touch on some of the practical issues with excluding noncitizens. To

exclude them would require the census to move the citizenship

question from the long form, which only about 15 percent of the

population receive, or one-sixth of the population, to the short form

which everyone gets. Now, it takes a long time to implement that

kind of change, so we need to think about that. And there is also

the question of accuracy.

Let me conclude by saying, it should be obvious a large noncitizen population is an unavoidable product of large-scale legal immigration and widespread toleration of illegal immigration. If you

want to avoid this situation, it seems the obvious thing to do is

change immigration policy. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Camarota follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Mr. Gonzalez.

STATEMENT OF LAWRENCE GONZALEZ

Mr. GONZALEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished

members of the subcommittee. Thank you for your invitation to testify regarding House Joint Resolution 53.

Our fund is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that empowers

Latinos to participate fully in the American political process from

citizenship to public service. It includes more than 6,000 Latino

elected and appointed officials nationwide.

Because of our longstanding work on promoting a full enumeration of the census, we were recently appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to serve as a member of the 2010 Census Advisory Committee. Member organizations of the 2010 CAC play a

critical role in advising the Census Bureau on how it can effectively

and effectively accomplish the goals and objectives. It is from our

extensive experience that I discuss with you today what we believe

would be the detrimental impacts of H.J. Res. 53 on the efforts to

fully integrate the second largest population group into our political system.

The passage of this resolution would serve to isolate segments of

society and send a message that only U.S. citizens have a right to

be heard by our government and elected officials. Omitting noncitizens from the traditional census count contradicts the body of the

U.S. Constitution, as well as the 14th amendment which specifically requires that States not discriminate against persons in their

jurisdictions.

Congress does not just represent citizens. Our Federal elected officials represent all persons, particularly children, who have not yet

reached the age to vote, and women, who did not have the right

to vote until passage of the 19th amendment and countless other

groups of residents of the United States.

Congress also represents the thousands of our American soldiers

offering their lives to protect our Nation who are not yet citizens

but are lawful, permanent residents. Surely these men and women

in uniform are entitled to be represented by the country for which

they are willing to sacrifice their lives.

This is dangerous ground when we decide to classify slaves as

not being whole persons, but three-fifths of a person. This amendment would determine that members of our society who are not yet

citizens are also not persons in the eyes of the law. This is fundamentally contrary to our values as Americans.

Congress has considered such changes to the Constitution before

and has rejected them each time, deciding instead to embrace the

principles established by the Framers of the Constitution that the

U.S. House of Representatives represents all persons residing in

this country, not just a few with rights.

In listening to the discussions and the presentations of research

surrounding the introduction of H.J. Res. 53 much of the debate is

focused on the number of undocumented immigrants and their impact on political representation. It focuses on winners and losers in

political terms.

For example, an analysis by the Congressional Research Service

from May 2005 indicates that if only citizens were counted in the

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2000 census, California, Texas, New York and Florida would have

lost congressional representation rather than gained. Because of

the large undocumented population, so the debate goes, and all persons rather than citizens were counted, several other States lost

representation. A discussion about counting only citizens is particularly disheartening when viewed in the context of potential Latino

political progress.

Let me offer the members of this subcommittee another perspective, a perspective that seems to get lost in the emotional debate

about illegal immigration and one that our organization cares very

deeply about. Last year our organization completed an analysis of

the population estimates of legal permanent residents eligible for

citizenship, that was produced by the Urban Institute demographer

Dr. Jeffrey Passel. These estimates reveal that one out of two of

the Nation’s legal permanent residents eligible for U.S. citizenship

were Latino, 4.2 million. Estimates were produced for Latino legal

permanent residents and all legal permanent residents, which totaled 7.7 million eligible to become citizens.

Since much of Dr. Passel’s estimates are based on Census 2000

data, we believe the overall number of LPRs eligible for citizenship

may now be approaching 10 million, with nearly half of those being

Latino. According to our analysis, most of the eligible Latino legal

permanent residents are in States that are traditional Latino population centers. About 77 percent of the Nation’s total live in California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey or Arizona.

This is important to note in light of the CRS analysis.

While we do not dispute the fact that there are large undocumented populations in these States, our analysis shows that there

are also many immigrants poised to become citizens. If the goal of

H.J. Res. 53 is to shift political power away from States that have

large concentrations of undocumented immigrants, the reality is

these States also have hundreds of thousands of immigrants who

are law-abiding citizens who have played by the rules and are preparing to become full participants in this Nation.

In conclusion, we agree with Representative Miller’s public statement that H.J. Res. 53 and this discussion today is about the concept of one person, one vote. If you are a person in this country,

you should be counted. While the Latino community continues on

its path to full political engagement and representation, we have

not yet reached that goal, and we will not reach it without the continued counting of all persons that reside within the United States.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gonzales follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. We will begin our questioning of this panel with

Congresswoman Miller.

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; I will be

brief. Again, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your holding

a hearing on this, because I do think it is such an important issue.

I would first start with Mr. Bensen of the Polidata Co. You have

a political perspective, I think, on what all this means.

And I do appreciate that, because it will have certainly an impact, but I do not think this can be viewed in a partisan way. From

a political standpoint, I do think that the shift should be to shift

political power from noncitizens to citizens.

But you also mentioned what would happen if we were to do this

and how it would impact the States, and as you mentioned, historically, it has been the practice of the States to apportion based on

sort of taking the ratcheting off of what is happening at the Federal level.

Do you have any comments whether you think it would be inappropriate for the States to apportion their State senate seats and

State house seats based on citizenship as well?

Mr. BENSEN. Well, there is some precedent for using something

other than population as a basis for apportionment in legislatures.

For instance, Hawaii at one time used registered voters. The State

of Vermont used registered voters at one time, as well; and several

States—at least Kansas, I know; I believe another State now—also

excludes military and students from their apportionment base. But

again the degree to which this has been addressed by the courts,

and the Supreme Court in particular, has largely rested upon the

assumption that population is the touchstone. Regardless, whatever basis the State uses should track the Federal census.

But again the trick there is whether that is because it’s the Federal census and it has done the best or because its population base

is kind of a mixed bag, but it’s more of the latter.

The question really is whether or not that can be done because

the accuracy of the data requires at the Federal level that block

level data reflect noncitizen status. Redistricting people are unique

in the census user community, shall we say, in the sense that they

are really the only users of the block level data. When we look at

the military—and in fact in 1990 and 2000 the military were added

on to the States’ resident population for apportionment of the U.S.

House. They were then excluded from the actual districting process

because there is no geographic precision as to where these people

live.

That is not going to be the case with the noncitizen aspect. We

would need to know exactly each block, which again raises a privacy issue to some degree as well because a census block could be

two, three or four people, not just a city block with 100 houses or

something. So there is some question as to whether that could be

done.

I am not saying it can’t be, but the question really more so in

that regard is whether or not the States are going to have an apportionment base that gives them that operation.

Mrs. MILLER. I appreciate that. I think the operative phrase here

is that they do have the option. I am a big supporter of State’s

rights, and I think it is important that every citizen is counted. As

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you said, some of them are looking at registered voters. Well, what

about people 18 or younger or convicted felons; they are still citizens of this Nation. I think they need to be counted certainly for

these purposes.

I would also make a comment that I think if you are a noncitizen

serving in the armed services, which does happen now—and we obviously salute everybody that wears a uniform for America—in

those cases, I think it would be very appropriate for us as a Nation

to expedite their citizenship process, and this is something that we

need to pursue as well.

Mr. Gonzalez, I was trying to take notes as you were talking

there. You did testify that the passage of the resolution would send

a message that only U.S. citizens would have a right to be heard

by our government and elected officials. Do you think it is the purpose of representative democracy to represent citizens or be responsive to every person that is in the country, even though those that

are here illegally, do you think it would be appropriate then for us

to allow the right to vote to people who are here illegally?

Mr. GONZALEZ. No, absolutely not. I do think that they should

have a level of representation according to the Constitution that all

persons should be represented, but in terms of undocumented

aliens voting, absolutely not.

Mrs. MILLER. I appreciate that. And so, in my mind, I guess my

thought process would be, if they already really have the right to

vote based on our current system, based on what is happening with

congressional representation, as I have mentioned and gone over

these statistics, you have the illegal immigrants or noncitizen population in California that has more impact on the Presidential election than it does in 20 States and the District of Columbia.

Again, when we are voting on issues like border security, what

have you, and illegal immigrants already have essentially the right

to vote—because they are impacting legislation, that is happening.

You have no problem with that, though?

Mr. GONZALEZ. I wouldn’t say I have a problem with it. I just

think there are other decisions being made by Members of Congress and elected officials that do impact the way the broader society views immigrants in general, and I don’t know that necessarily

our society differentiates.

I think it is very similar to this overall immigration reform debate, where it is fine to talk about border security and all of that,

but often from the Hispanic perspective what people hear is antiHispanic. So there’s not this real differentiation. They look, see

Hispanic, you must be illegal, you might be. We don’t know, all we

know is, we are against this. And that is the message being sent

and that is our concern more than anything.

Mrs. MILLER. I appreciate that. We certainly do not want to send

that message. I know I do not.

As I mentioned to you, in southeast Michigan, principally because of the auto jobs, almost every ethnic group around the planet

has come and has been a wonderful part of the fabric of our society

there. And that is so with Hispanics and almost every ethnic group

that you can think of. I think we have the highest Arabic population in the Nation, and it makes for a wonderful culture there

and we do not want to send a message of anti-immigration.

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I think we all need to make certain that we continue to welcome

immigrants to this Nation. It really is what has been the backbone

of our Nation, makes us strong. I do not believe that this resolution

would change that in any way.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TURNER. Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank all of the

panelists for your testimony.

Mr. Bensen, on page 6, point one of your testimony, you testified

that it would, in fact, be very difficult to count only citizens in the

decennial census and would likely result in a failed census. And I

quote from your testimony: I believe it is not possible that the data

collected will meet the high threshold of accuracy that is required

for the apportionment process.

Could you elaborate for us in more detail of why you believe that

the data collected for a citizen-only census would not be accurate

enough for apportionment purposes?

Mr. BENSEN. Sure. First off, most of what we know about noncitizen aspects—and it is certainly, most of everything I talked about

noncitizen aspects is from the census and from the not short form

but the long form—it is sample data. And if there is anything that

those of us working in redistricting have learned over the last decade, we can’t use sample data for the purposes of apportionment.

So, right away, there is a problem. We can’t rely upon the current information we have. And all of these estimates are based

upon that sample data.

The other aspect is the inherent bias in a respondent of anyone

to a survey, in essence a census, as to the kind of social and political mores. It seems better to say you are a citizen, so many people

will say they are a citizen when they are not. Or, on the other

hand, they may feel a chilling effect in it and not answer at all.

If they—in the old days, 1990 or 2000, had they not answered that

question, in all likelihood, it would have been filled in by imputation because it was a long-form question. It was not a critical data

element. By transmogrifying the status of it from an informational

piece of information into the legal aspect of whether or not it is

going to have an impact on apportionment, it changes the whole

character of it.

And I think it has an inherent bias. It has a tendency to be nonresponsive, and therefore, the Bureau would have to spend more

money to go and find out whether in fact these people were citizens. And then, again, it is not the Bureau’s job to determine

whether or not they are citizens. Everything the census form collects and everything that we know from the census is self-response

data. There is no showing your passport to anyone. It is what you

fill out. The same thing with all the race and ethnic data. It is

what you put down as to whether you are from the Ukraine or

whatever. It is not a thing that the Bureau can verify, and I don’t

think they have the resources or should be asked to verify.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you for your statement.

We have talked a great deal today about apportionment. But the

census really is a picture of America. And it is used for many,

many purposes; research, allocation of resources. And I believe that

is why our founding fathers had it based on people, the amount of

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people. There are areas where there are people on the road to becoming citizens and so forth. Counting them accurately is very important, not only for business—business relies very heavily on census data for projections—and certainly city governments and State

governments for purposes of services, needs, infrastructure,

schools, hospitals. All of this is very important data that I would

just like to open it up to any of you to answer.

What would be the impact if you started excluding large swaths

of population and saying, they’re not going to be counted? Then you

are not going to have the data that gives us an accurate picture

of who we are as a Nation, where our needs are, where the trends

are, where we are going, certainly who is in the country, what their

ages are. So I would like to open it up for anyone to comment on

that.

Mr. BENSEN. I will be brief about it and move on here. First off,

we have to remember that the constitutional purpose of the census

is for apportionment. And for most of the history of the census,

there really were no other questions asked, all the other fun socioeconomic data that we get we didn’t have before.

But the other thing really is it goes back to the question I was

talking about with with Congresswoman Miller which is, what will

the Bureau provide to the States? If the Bureau says that since its

subjective purpose is to count people for apportionment, and the

constitutional amendment says you will only count citizens, there

is no reason for the Bureau to provide us with that other information for noncitizens.

On the other hand, there is no prohibition, I suppose, in the

sense that they could count citizens, count noncitizens and provide

separate sets of data for both. But that is a whole bigger question

as to operational capabilities.

Mr. CAMAROTA. On the specific question of, if we moved the specific question of citizenship from the long form to the short form,

it probably wouldn’t have that much impact, if any, on response

rates just by itself to simply ask people if they are citizens. Now

but that assumes that the current regime, if we were to actually

begin to enforce our immigration laws, and then people were to get

a survey asking them whether they were citizens, then maybe that

could have an impact.

Research generally shows very little reluctance on the part of

illegals generally. We think that—and this is based on work done

at the Urban Institute and the Census Bureau—we think 90 percent-plus of the illegal aliens, respond not only to the census but

other surveys like the current population survey. That is how we

get demographic information on illegals. The INS has also done estimates on how many illegals are in the census. And again, it looks

like 90 percent-plus.

So, right now, asking citizenship—and that is, again, all from

surveys that ask whether you are a citizen—it doesn’t appear that

people are reluctant to give us that information. But, again, if we

try to enforce the law and people got that question, then there

might be some impact.

Mrs. MALONEY. But what you are saying, how in the world would

the Bureau distinguish between a citizen and noncitizen? ObviVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:38 Mar 28, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00067 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\26074.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ously, many people will say they are citizens whether they are or

not. So, how would the Bureau distinguish?

Mr. CAMAROTA. I think, right now, just like we take everyone’s

word if you say you are a particular race or an ethnicity, even

though we know from prior research that people give different answers to that question sometimes—the Census Bureau has found

it can’t even get respondents to get the same answer on the race

and ethnicity question the same way each time it asks. But we just

accept it, whatever anyone says. So you can just accept the census

question on citizenship.

Now, people who have tried to look at the actual number of citizens trying to look at administrative data and figure out how many

citizens there are find that, in general, most groups—it is not very

slated—among Hispanic immigrants there is a tendency to overstate citizenship, particularly among Mexican immigrants who may

be legal residents but confuse that with citizenship, we are not

sure exactly what is going on. But, in general, the 18 or 19 million

noncitizens in the 2000 census isn’t that far off.

And, again, there are lots of other questions that we use where

we just take people’s word for it when they say their race. And,

again, that stuff is not set in stone, so you could just ask and be

done with it that way.

Mr. GONZALEZ. The other thing I would add, I think it raises

some privacy issues, and we’ve been down that road with the Census Bureau. When you start to ask people mathematical outcome

status, you know, you send out messages that information that is

received by the census is private. I think we saw a situation not

too long ago with Arab Americans where data was released. So I

think it raises that issue as well.

Mrs. MALONEY. I do also, Mr. Gonzalez, know that, in my office,

there are numerous legal immigrants on the road to citizenship.

And there are many hurdles they have to go through. And would

this proposal disenfranchise that group that is on the road to citizenship?

Mr. GONZALEZ. I think folks clearly understand the difference between being illegal and being a U.S. citizen and whether or not

they are not legal, particularly from a Latino perspective.

Mr. BENSEN. Could I add one clarification? We have talked mathematical outcome short form/long form again. I think we have to

have a mind shift here which is—someone can correct me if I’m

wrong—but my understanding is that the current budgetary situation is, we will in fact have an ACS for the coming years. We will

not have a long form.

So the only census form that will come out in 2010 will be, in

essence, the short form. So whatever happens here if this, in fact,

is adopted and takes effect before then, it would have to be on the

short form, which does address some of the privacy concerns that

were mentioned here and I addressed earlier as well.

But I think we have to get a mindset here which is, right now,

we will have all this information from noncitizens from ACS, and

we will have it every year, which is, in a sense, from the standpoint

of the shift in the population more interesting.

Mrs. MALONEY. That is an important contribution, but as you

said in your testimony, it will not answer the accuracy question.

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Mr. BENSEN. I was just trying to clarify——

Mrs. MALONEY. The accuracy question is the question. And as

you pointed out in your testimony, it is a huge problem, huge challenge. And if you can’t be accurate, what do you have?

Mr. BENSEN. We could not use the ACS data for apportionment.

That would only solve the informational aspects of it.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you. As I stated in my opening comments,

the purposes of this hearing is informational, to let people know

that this is the manner in which apportionment is done and to

have an understanding of the possible impacts subject to passage

of the constitutional amendment proposed by Congresswoman Miller.

With that, I have basically five things that I am hoping we can

leave this hearing with, and I am going to go through four of them

and ask the panelists to see if I can get consensus that we all agree

on at least these topics. And basically, it doesn’t matter what side

of the issue you are on. It doesn’t matter if you think we should

only count the citizens or if you think we should, in 2010, count

persons or it is a good thing that we count persons. Here is a mathematical equation and a mathematical outcome, so it is not relatively subjective as to its impact.

So I would like to go over some of those. The first one is to followup on Congresswoman Miller’s question to Mr. Gonzalez, and

that I want to ask the other two witnesses, and that is, your belief

that noncitizens should not be allowed to vote. Would you confirm

that your belief is similar to Mr. Gonzalez?

Mr. BENSEN. Well, certainly, yes, my position is——

Mr. TURNER. This is an easy one.

Mr. BENSEN. My position is perhaps more adamant than that. I

have always had a problem with the fact that noncitizens indirectly

vote for Presidents.

Mr. TURNER. We are going to get there. But on a straight direct

vote, your answer would be no?

Mr. BENSEN. Yes.

Mr. CAMAROTA. My answer would be as well. Voting should be

reserved for citizens.

Mr. TURNER. The second issue—this is a mathematical one and

not a value statement—is that the counting of noncitizens dilutes

the vote of citizens. We have the maps here that show that coming

up—and I will use my State—in 2010, Ohio is slated to lose two

Members of Congress. If the constitutional amendment was passed,

Ohio would, in 2010, by current projections, gain a Congressman—

no?

Mr. BENSEN. It would only lose one.

Mr. TURNER. It says plus one. So we are going to lose one?

Mr. BENSEN. Now, this is in comparison to whether the citizens

were in or not. So in other words, Ohio would only lose one seat.

Mr. TURNER. So then we are to subtract these two, not add them

together. So Ohio would be ahead by not having lost one?

Mr. BENSEN. Correct.

Mr. TURNER. Having lost another one. So the fact that we would

go from losing two to losing one shows that, as a State, that our

vote in Congress and Ohio is diluted by the fact that noncitizens

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are counted in other congressional districts and congressional representation in seats move.

So the question is, do you agree that counting noncitizens for the

purposes of apportionment dilutes the votes of citizens? Mr.

Bensen.

Mr. BENSEN. Yes.

Mr. CAMAROTA. Mathematically, the case, yes, especially in a

low-immigration State like Ohio.

Mr. GONZALEZ. No.

Mr. TURNER. That is why I was hoping to go through these in

that how, could you explain to me if my State is going to lose votes

in Congress—that means less chairmanships, less members on

committees and less votes—and other States are going to gain

votes in Congress, based on counting noncitizens; how is it that the

counting of noncitizens doesn’t dilute the voting?

Mr. GONZALEZ. Other States simply have larger—to compare a

State like Ohio and a State like California I think is comparing apples and oranges, or to compare a State like Ohio with a State like

Texas just in terms of the sheer size of those kinds of States, regardless of the undocumented population, they would still have a

larger vote and a voice. I mean, every citizen in the United States

has a vote and a voice the day that they walk into a polling place

and cast their ballot.

Mr. TURNER. But their allocation to congressional districts are diminished by the counting of noncitizens. We have the charts here

that shows in the States that are listed that, as a result of the

counting of noncitizens, in Congress, the citizens that live in those

States have less representation here. That means, when a matter

comes to the floor, their State has less of a vote because of the

counting of noncitizens.

In my view, that dilutes the vote of the citizens. Whether you are

for that or against that, I would think that you would mathematically have to agree that is occurring.

Mr. GONZALEZ. OK, I will go there with you. I will go down that

road with you.

Mr. TURNER. So you would agree then that it does dilute their

vote in Congress?

Mr. GONZALEZ. In Congress, yes.

Mr. TURNER. The third thing is that because that allocation also

has an impact on the allocation of the Electoral College, it has the

potential to impact the outcome of Presidential elections by counting noncitizens for allocation of the Electoral College. Mr. Bensen,

do you agree?

Mr. BENSEN. Definitely, yes.

Mr. CAMAROTA. Undeniably the case, yes.

Mr. GONZALEZ. Yes.

Mr. TURNER. Because of two and three that we just went

through, it seems to me that goes to the inherent issue in the constitutional convention in that it impacts the balance of power between the States. Some States have greater influence in Congress

than other States as a result of the counting of noncitizen populations within their borders. Mr. Bensen.

Mr. BENSEN. Yes.

Mr. CAMAROTA. Yes.

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Mr. GONZALEZ. Yes.

Mr. TURNER. I am going to give one more discussion on what I

consider the fifth topic or my fifth goal for this hearing, and that

is the issue of, how would—if this constitutional amendment were

to pass, how would it be implemented? And we have heard some

of the discussion of the difficulties of accomplishing that. And I

want to give each of you an open opportunity to express your opinions and your views on, if the constitutional amendment passed,

how it would have an impact on the administration of the census

and the impact it would have on communities as we attempt to determine citizenship. We will start with Mr. Bensen.

Mr. BENSEN. Well, I don’t see much good from the standpoint of

the likely impact of it, aside from the point which I addressed

which is, the operational aspects of the Bureau even trying to determine this and process the returns when they can’t verify anything, going out and following up on the people who have not responded to the form, the entire form now, because they decide not

to answer that question.

Now let’s assume time-wise it is implemented for the 2010 apportionment, and it goes in. There will inevitably be litigation over it.

However, there will have already been an apportionment. There

will have already been districts drawn for the 2011 and 2012 elections around the country. Those elections will be entirely put at

jeopardy, and our peaceful transition of political power may be just

totally upside down.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Camarota.

Mr. CAMAROTA. Well, every reapportionment involves litigation.

If we were worried about litigation, I would say, we just can’t have

any reapportionment. But on the question of moving one question

from the long form to the short form, Congresswoman Miller’s proposal is not that unreasonable. It has one big advantage. One of

the problems that the Census Bureau—and I do work for them—

that they face is it is very hard to estimate immigration. We don’t

know how many people leave and come and go and that sort of

thing. If we have that question on the short form, in other words,

everyone was asked every 10 years, it would probably be very helpful in terms of our migration estimates so that, in between the census, it is conceivable that will actually improve our estimates for

things like the current population survey and the American community survey which we are not sure how to weight right now because, quite frankly, we are not sure how many people are coming

and going, especially illegal. The census, by asking everyone that

citizen question, would allow us to identify the foreign born every

10 years. And it might improve the quality of our data between the

census. But it may also have the effect of discouraging some people

from responding.

There isn’t much evidence right now that asking that question is

a problem. In my work for the Census Bureau, I interview people

who actually survey immigrants for their American community survey. And the citizenship question sometimes causes some confusion. There is sometimes some reluctance. But, in general, people

seem willing to answer it right now. And I think that would probably be the case if we moved it to the short form. But if we actually

began to enforce our immigration laws, then that might change.

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Then people might not be. I think that is a question that we are

not sure.

But I don’t see it as quite this terribly onerous thing. I think it

can be done. And then we just take people at their word, just like

we take people at their word about their race, even though we

know from prior research people don’t always give the same answer

on race and ethnicity. We just take them at their word. That’s the

way I think it could work.

Mr. GONZALEZ. The only thing I would add, Representative, is—

I’ll let the professionals at the Census Bureau answer as far as

operationally. I would just go back to the privacy issue. I think

from the work that we do on the census, particularly census 2000

and 1990, I think it would discourage people. There would be

issues on, you know, what exactly—why are they asking these

kinds of questions, what it means, so there would be a much larger

outreach effort that needs to be done in terms of trying to get at

the answers that they would be requesting.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Mr. Dent.

Mr. DENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Bensen, I think I will direct my question to you. I was reading through your data, and in my State of Pennsylvania, we often

talk about the term brain drain, that we have a hard time retaining citizens who are between the ages of about 21 to 39, the second

largest elderly population in the Nation as a percentage of the population after Florida.

And I guess what I am trying to understand is, how much of the

loss of congressional representation in States like Pennsylvania

and Ohio and Michigan, for example, is caused by that brain drain

and simple population migration from the northeast, Midwest and

to the south and west versus noncitizens being counted over these

many decades. As I said, my State, probably 1930’s, had well over

30 Congressmen. In 1960, it was 27, I believe. And today, it is 19.

And I am trying to get a sense, historically, why did we lose all

these seats, and how much of it is attributable to noncitizens being

counted in these high-growth States?

Mr. BENSEN. Pennsylvania, I would have to double check, but it

is unique in the sense it has lost at least a seat in Congress in each

of the last——

Mr. DENT. We lost two in 2000, two in 1990 and probably in 1980

as well.

Mr. BENSEN. Historically, for several decades, it has always lost

one or two seats.

Mr. DENT. And the good news, according to this data, we are only

going to lose one.

Mr. BENSEN. First off, remember that a lot of the noncitizen stuff

we have really—again, since 1980, it was only 3 percent of the population that were noncitizens. So a lot of that, historically, was not

related to that at all. For Pennsylvania, it is not the predominant

factor. The predominant factor is the brain drain. It is just people

leaving the entire region, not necessarily Pennsylvania but just

leaving the region. This is kind of like another little insult. We are

having trouble already, but now we are going to lose this as well.

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Mr. DENT. And I guess the question is, as you know, there is discussion in this building about the guest-worker programs. Do you

think that, if we did have a guest-worker program in the United

States, that those guest workers would disproportionately reside in

States with large noncitizen populations like those in California

and Texas and elsewhere?

Mr. BENSEN. I am certainly not an expert on that, but certainly

that would seem to be the case.

Mr. CAMAROTA. Sure, certain States are attracting immigrants.

There is no reason to expect a change in that in the immediate future. Though, over the long-term, all the evidence would project

that over the next 50, 100 years, immigrants and their descendants

will spread out. But if we were to turn all the illegal aliens in the

United States into guest workers somehow tomorrow, they would

continue to likely reside, and there would be some movement thereafter, and it is important to note they almost certainly would be

counted in the census.

Mr. DENT. You believe, if we did have a guest-worker program,

they would be counted in the census as people?

Mr. CAMAROTA. In the last census, we counted over a million people who were guest workers and foreign students by everyone’s estimates, Urban Institute’s, Census Bureau, INS, and in addition to

that, we counted 7 or 8 million illegal aliens. So if we turned them

into guest workers—and that population is now probably about 11

million illegal aliens, maybe 12—we can expect that some 90 percent of these newly legalized or guest-workerized illegal aliens will

also respond to the census. Congressional seats will then be drawn

for them, but of course, they can’t vote, and all the issues come up.

And that is an important thing to always keep in mind, that even

a guest-worker program has profound consequences for the United

States, including political representation outside of the work force.

Mr. BENSEN. One other thought, just to clarify what he is saying

about the 100 years out, in each of the four censuses that I looked

at, the 1980, 1990, 2000 and projection for 2010, not only the number of seats that were affected but the number of States that were

affected has risen a lot. And in fact, I did a couple of different scenarios for 2010, and I had even more States being affected. So the

fact is, as we know, since many of the noncitizens are Mexicans or

of Hispanic origin, Hispanic-origin people, unlike African-Americans, are scattered all around the country.

There are a lot of African-American communities, obviously

largely in the south and the urban core and northeast and such,

but Hispanics are really spread out much more. And that is part

of the problem, from the standpoint of the impact on the number

of States. The number of States that are likely to be affected,

again, only one seat, will definitely increase from the standpoint of

where the current trends are because Hispanics comprise the largest portion of noncitizens who are scattered all around the country.

Mr. CAMAROTA. I agree. Absent a change in the U.S. immigration

policy, the impact will grow on a State like Pennsylvania, but in

the very long term, we could expect that immigrants will become—

and their descendants—more evenly distributed. But that is decades from now.

Mr. DENT. Mr. Gonzalez, do you have any thoughts on this?

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Mr. GONZALEZ. I would disagree. If you look at where the largest

growth is, North Carolina, Georgia, States like that, that was basically the news of the census 2000 that the Hispanic community

was no longer just in these urban areas; we had moved to suburban and rural areas.

Mr. DENT. In my congressional district in Pennsylvania, we have

a large Latino population, primarily Puerto Rican, and in eastern

Pennsylvania, we have seen a large growth in the Hispanic population. But, again, it is, I guess probably not as many noncitizens

because Puerto Ricans are, of course, American citizens. Well,

thank you for your insights. It is very helpful to me.

Yield back.

Mr. TURNER. Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. I was not here when Mr. Turner asked the question, but I understand he had some questions about noncitizens diluting the votes of citizens in other States. Well, I would like to ask

the panelists a question.

With regard to the Electoral College, is it not true that the votes

of people in smaller States are worth far more than those of larger

States given the value of the two senators in their State representation? And isn’t my vote diluted, being from New York, compared

to someone in Rhode Island? And do the panelists think we should

do away with the Senate because this dilutes the votes of people?

Mr. TURNER. Which they may be for for other reasons.

Mrs. MALONEY. So I would like to start with Mr. Bensen and

have each one of you answer.

Mr. BENSEN. Well, the question was not exclusive. It was more

a question, would this be vote dilution? Yes, your scenario would

be that, yes, my home State of Vermont is obviously far more powerful in the U.S. Congress than your home State of New York.

Mr. CAMAROTA. Yes. The answer is obviously, big States are penalized in the Senate, so that there are ways in which votes get

diluted in our system that are not related to the presence of noncitizens in other States. But nonetheless, the presence of noncitizens in other States is maybe something we can fix, assuming we

think the Senate is OK the way it is.

Mrs. MALONEY. Well, if you are concerned about diluting the

votes, then maybe we should do away with the Senate, too, if that

is your concern.

Mr. Gonzalez.

Mr. GONZALEZ. I would agree with you, again, under that scenario, I know that a number of our members in New Mexico very

much enjoy the focus that has been placed upon them over the last

few election cycles with their whopping four electoral votes. Absolutely.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. No further questions.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

We will turn to our third panel. We will thank each of you for

participating, for your preparation and your time today.

Our third panel includes Dr. Ken Prewitt, professor of public affairs, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University; Mr. Johnny Killian, senior specialist in constitutional law,

American Law Division, Congressional Research Service; Mr.

James Gimpel, professor of government, University of Maryland;

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Mr. Andrew Spiropoulos, professor of law, Oklahoma City University School of Law; Ms. Nina Perales, Southwestern regional counsel, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

I want to thank each of our members of the third panel. They

have prepared written testimony which has been submitted to the

members of the subcommittee. They have been asked then to provide an oral summary of their testimony, which the witnesses will

notice that there is a timer light on the witness table. The green

light indicates you should begin your prepared remarks, and the

red light indicates the time has expired. The yellow light will indicate when you have 1 minute left to conclude your remarks. Your

oral testimony presentation will constitute a time period of 5 minutes. It is the policy of this committee that all witnesses be sworn

in before they testify. If you would please rise and raise your right

hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TURNER. Please let the record show that all witnesses responded in the affirmative.

And we will begin with Dr. Prewitt.

STATEMENTS OF KENNETH PREWITT, CARNEGIE PROFESSOR

OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY; JOHNNY H. KILLIAN,

SENIOR SPECIALIST, AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW,

AMERICAN LAW DIVISION, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH

SERVICE; JAMES G. GIMPEL, PROFESSOR OF GOVERNMENT,

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK; ANDREW C.

SPIROPOULOS, PROFESSOR OF LAW, OKLAHOMA CITY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW; AND NINA PERALES, SOUTHWESTERN REGIONAL COUNSEL, MEXICAN AMERICAN LEGAL

DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND

STATEMENT OF KENNETH PREWITT

Mr. PREWITT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Drawing on my experience as the director of the Census Bureau

and a number of studies that I’ve conducted on the census since,

I would offer cautionary comments about the amendment under

four headings: Census Accuracy; A Census Endangered; A Civics

Opportunity Lost; The Census and Fairness.

I also believe, before I get to those topics, that the amendment

runs counter to a fundamental principle that has guided how census-taking and democracy co-evolved starting in 1790. This principle is deliberately, carefully placed into the Constitution by the

Nation’s Founders. The Founders were mindful that numbers were

political, especially in a representative democracy. And because of

this, they designed the decennial census to be the apolitical, nonpartisan starting point whose end points were appropriately political and partisan.

This was their genius, to keep the taking of the census out of politics so that the results of the census could be used in politics. It

is this principle that is at risk should this amendment be adopted.

It will be widely portrayed as a political instruction to the Census Bureau to count in such a way that one set of partisan interests are advanced and another retarded. Whether this is the intent

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of the sponsors is not at issue. Motivations do not interest me. Consequences do.

It is inevitable that the extensive and heated public debate over

this amendment will endlessly repeat that partisan interests are

behind the change in how the census is taken. This will erode a

basic principle that was clearly of importance to the Founders and

has served the Nation for more than two centuries.

I urge the sponsors to reflect deeply before taking this step.

There will be no turning back.

Let me then turn to census accuracy. The proposed amendment

will lead to a less complete and less accurate census. A significant

number of noncitizens will not respond to the decennial census.

Many members of the public, citizens and noncitizens alike, are

wary about the census. I remind you of the privacy debate that

erupted in 2000. Many political leaders were quick to denounce the

census as a violation of privacy. The decennial census came to symbolize an invasive Federal Government.

One Member of Congress said, ‘‘I am happy to voluntarily cooperate with the government in areas where I decide it makes sense.

Beyond that, it starts to meet the definition of intrusive.’’

A Senate leader advised the public to ‘‘just fill out what you need

to fill out and [not] anything you feel uncomfortable with.’’ The

Senate passed a nonbinding resolution urging that no American be

prosecuted, fined or in any way harassed by the Federal Government for not answering questions on the census form.

The privacy debate in 2000 underscores the general wariness in

our public about what is viewed as government intrusiveness. The

proposed amendment plays into this wariness by highlighting that

the government has some need on a block-by-block basis to distinguish citizens from noncitizens. The nuanced reasons for this, well

expressed by those who testify in support of this amendment, will

be lost to the millions upon millions of Americans. This question

will be treated with suspicion.

Taking their cue from national leaders who, in 2000, said, ‘‘skip

the questions you don’t like or find intrusive,’’ many American citizens as well as noncitizens will do just that, and accuracy will suffer.

In addition, the huge partnership program that was mounted in

2000 to solicit census cooperation rested upon an argument that if

you are not counted, you are not represented. Many of those partners will simply not step forward if this amendment is passed, especially, I believe, the Catholic Church.

A Census Endangered: The Congress, if endorsed in this case by

three-fourths of the States, can absorb, I think, some deterioration

in quality and decide that is a worthwhile tradeoff to realize the

purposes of the amendment.

If, however, the Congress were to instruct the Census Bureau to

validate the citizen status of census respondents, much more of the

data quality is at stake. There is nothing in terms of the amendment to suggest that this is what anyone has in mind. But it is

foolish to expect that census-taking is immune from anxieties that

surround such issues as undocumented aliens, immigration enforcement and so forth.

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I can promise you that, if the conversation moves from census

citizen to noncitizen, to aid illegals and legals, that this concern

will be magnified in the Congress or in the country.

Finally, I would like to say this is an opportunity lost. Under the

new terms of the census, we have a marvelous opportunity to teach

the American public a civics lesson. I have in mind that promotion

and advertising can emphasize the connection between population

numbers and political representation. Such a message will increase

public understanding of how our democracy works. The sequence

from population distribution to apportionment and redistricting,

and from there to elections, from elections to public policy is not

well understood by the general public.

A mobilization campaign of the scope used in 2000 could be a

civics lesson. More ambitiously, it could be designed as a civics

ceremony. Imagine 535 Members of Congress completing their census forms at the Jefferson Memorial on census day.

The census is, in fact, the only such civics ceremony available to

the American public. Our national holidays no longer perform this

service. The census has the merit of being inclusive. Everyone is

to be counted. It is hopefully nonpartisan. It has consequences for

the fundamental workings of our democracy at the national, State

and local levels.

It is certainly the only civic event that has its origins in the Constitution. The civics lesson, of course, would be foregone if the census is not viewed as the nonpartisan starting point of political representation. And I think this amendment will derail that principle.

There is also the issue of fairness; no taxation without representation. That argument will once again be heard. It will be the Boston Tea Party all over. This is clearly a no taxation without representation. The amendment is also a military service without representation, of course.

What is special about the census is its reputation for advancing

principles of fairness in American political life. This reputation

rests on the deep principle that representation is allocated to a portion of the population size, not the counts to distinguish property

owners from nonproperty owners, the educated from the

uneducated, the voters from nonvoters, citizens from noncitizens.

These distinctions have a place in public policy but not in the fundamental starting point from which all public policy springs.

In conclusion, representative democracy has come a long way

since 1790 when a handful of Senators and Representatives assembled to start the great experiment in self-government. Census-taking has come a long way since 1790. As anticipated by the Constitution, the census has carried the heavy weight assigned to it in

what can rightly be described as America’s longest continuous scientific undertaking.

Census accuracy and fairness matter to this story. However, let

us grant that a less accurate and less fair census can still carry the

weight assigned to it by the Constitution.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Prewitt, you need to conclude.

Mr. PREWITT. We can still redistrict. And perhaps this is the

price that we should pay. But I am less confident about the future

of the census if it is thought by millions upon millions of Americans

to have been designed to advance partisan interests, even if this inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:38 Mar 28, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00077 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\26074.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tent is absent among the amendment sponsors. A census so understood will cease to command the respect and confidence that we

rely upon. I urge the Congress to respect the genius of the Founders who take great care to separate how the census is taken from

the political uses to which the numbers are applied. We undo their

craftsmanship at our peril. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Prewitt follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Mr. Killian.

STATEMENT OF JOHNNY H. KILLIAN

Mr. KILLIAN. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, as an

employee of the Congressional Research Service, I am of course obligated to give Members of Congress objective and nonpartisan advice and information.

As a consequence, I cannot address the merits of this proposal

and say yea or nay with regard to whether it should be adopted,

whether it should be defeated or what not. My purpose, as I understand it, in appearing before the committee is to talk about several

aspects, the constitutional amending process, the basis in the Constitution of using the total numbers of the population for purposes

of apportionment, and, if there may be some questions regarding

that that would be raised if the amendment were adopted.

In the first place, I think we need to notice, with regard to the

original Constitution, and the Constitution amended by the 14th

amendment, that with regard to the use of the total population for

apportionment, there are two significant provisions in the Constitution. One is that the States determine the qualifications of the voters in each State. That is, the Constitution provides that voting

qualifications for Members of the House and consequently the Senate and the electors and the Electoral College is based on the qualifications that each State of electors for the more populous House

of the legislature.

Second, there is a time, place and manner clause which gives the

States the power to determine how and what manner the full details of election of Representatives and Senators, but it also gives

the Congress the power to displace any or all of those regulations

so that a lot of the questions that might be raised by the amendment, by the change from total population, citizen population,

would of course raise questions under these two.

Second, I think we need to take a look at some of the constitutional amendment problems that have arisen in the past. There is

no prospect, I think, of Congress addressing most of those in the

amendment, in the text of the amendment. The question simply is

to evaluate how there might be questions.

We have a prospective of time limitations for instance. The time

limitation in this proposal is 7 years, as in previous amendments.

It is in the proposing resolution, not in the text of the amendment

itself. It used to be in the text of the amendment itself. Congress

changed that when scholars began saying, why are you cluttering

up the Constitution with things like time limitations? So it put in

a resolution. That created a serious debate with respect to the

Equal Rights Amendment. As you are all aware, the Equal Rights

Amendment, as the time for ratification began to run, ratification

was not completed, Congress debated and then adopted a resolution extending the time period to 10 years, adding on another 3

years. The assertion was that because it was not in the text of the

amendment itself on which the States had acted, the Congress had

the power.

We don’t know the correct answer to this. The expiration of the

time limitation meant that it was never resolved by the Supreme

Court or another body. It should, however, I think be of interest

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to the committee, to Members of Congress generally, in considering

where the present time limitation is.

Last, there is a question with regard to what other interpretive

problems adoption of the amendment might raise. If the amendment were adopted and apportionment is based on citizen population, would States that do the districting be limited as well to

total citizen population, or could they continue to do total population including noncitizens?

Obviously, Congress might, by using the time, place and manner

clause, regulate distance to some extent. Otherwise we are going

to have court decisions running through this. Congress does not

have to resolve this issue, but should be aware that, in terms of

the present language of the proposal, that this would be raised.

I thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Killian follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Killian.

Mr. Gimpel.

STATEMENT OF JAMES G. GIMPEL

Mr. GIMPEL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me. I appreciate your effort to tackle a troubling issue. I have learned a lot

from the other panelists already here this morning.

As the other testimony at the hearing makes clear, re-apportionment and redistricting based on noncitizen settlement patterns are

profoundly affecting Congress and America’s political process in unanticipated ways.

Clearly, today’s congressional districts are not equal in critical

respects that matter greatly to the operation of our government.

Consider what it takes to get elected to a seat where there were

only 60,000 voters compared to one where there are eight or nine

times that many to be reached in the course of an election campaign.

Consider the fundraising burden alone, for example, and how unequal that is. Consider also the unequal workloads of the Members

of Congress who represent these very highly unequal districts. Survey data have shown decisively that citizens are far more demanding of Members of Congress than noncitizens, even after we consider the casework associated with naturalization and citizenship.

As a consequence of representing a large share of noncitizens,

one Member may have to chase only a small fraction of the Social

Security checks that another does. One Member must respond to

only half the amount of constituent mail. To be sure, noncitizens

and nonvoters also contact congressional offices, but they do so far

less frequently than citizens, hence even if Members of Congress do

respond to noncitizen requests for assistance, the work loads are

still highly unequal. One Member of the U.S. House should not

have to spread her staff more thinly to cover her constituents’ demands than another simply because of the presence of noncitizens

in the apportionment base.

Real examples are out there. So we don’t have to confine ourselves to hypotheticals. Consider several of the immigrant-heavy

southern California congressional districts. We might consider the

31st, as Representative Miller did in her remarks, the 33rd or perhaps the 37th. In 2004, a year of record high turnout around the

Nation, only 110,460 votes were cast in the 33rd district contest,

and the incumbent was re-elected with 741⁄2 percent of the vote. In

2002, the same incumbent was re-elected by a similar margin in a

contest that saw a mere 65,800 votes cast. In 2002, the incumbent

in the 37th district was re-elected in a contest that saw only 88,000

votes cast. And in 2004, this Member ran unopposed.

Now let’s pull out two districts from Michigan and Ohio. Lots of

districts would make the comparison, but we will pick two for the

sake of illustration. Take the 12th District of Michigan and the

17th District of Ohio. Either one or both of these seats could be

reconfigured or lost entirely in the 2010 reapportionment simply

because their constituents happen to be unlucky enough to be born

in this country. There is something about our moral intuitions that

just doesn’t gibe with that outcome.

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Now both of those Members, Representative Ryan and Representative Levin were re-elected by solid margins, similar to those

of their colleagues in California, but the task of representation and

of running for re-election is very different from what the California

Members face. Because the California districts contain thousands

of noncitizens and the Michigan and Ohio districts rather few, the

Midwestern districts may disappear in 2010 because the constituents of these two Members were unlucky enough to be citizens.

A Member of Congress who receives 200,000 votes will be thrown

out, and the one who has received only 50,000 will be retained only

because of noncitizens in the apportionment phase.

Folks, the perverse moral of the current system is clear: The

greater the proportion of citizens in a State, the fewer congressional seats that State receives. You can actually quantify the current penalty of citizenship on congressional apportionment, and the

precise relationship is shown in figure 1 in my testimony. I had it

on a Power Point, but we couldn’t get it up there today. But you

can see it if you turn to figure 1 on page 6.

Figure 1 indicates that, for every 1 percent increase in percentage of citizens in the State in 2000, there is a 1.7 drop—we could

round to 2—in the number of congressional seats the State received

in the decennial reapportionment. Now, naturally this relationship

is an artifact of where noncitizens flow, that is to the more populous States, but it is still very striking and provides a concrete estimate of the impact of the geographic concentration of noncitizens

on a political system. Could it some day be the case that a congressional district is created that has literally no citizens inside it?

None? Completely hollow?

Theoretically, this is clearly possible, although a State legislature

would surely be sensible enough to stop short of this. Nearly hollow

districts do exist though, and the proliferation of such districts does

tax the citizenship status of all Americans.

Solutions. Well, we can pass Representative Miller’s amendment

and, you know, tough out the consequences with respect to census

administration. I might add, by the way, that the census has been

changed many, many times, and we have toughed it out in the

past.

Another solution, well, let everybody vote; let’s do away with citizenship as a pathway to voting, give everyone the right to vote and

forget about citizenship as a means toward obtaining voting rights.

You know, good luck passing that. I don’t think that is very viable.

One thing we could do, I suppose, that Steve Camarota recommended in his testimony, would be to reduce immigration levels.

That would certainly mitigate the impact at least over time.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Gimpel, you’re going to have to conclude your

remarks.

Mr. GIMPEL. Or we could leave things as they are, of course,

which is probably the most likely scenario I think. But I will just

finish up by saying, until we decide how to address this serious

vote-dilution problem, American voters will suffer from unequal

representation. Congress and the executive branch should work together to restore fairness and integrity to the electoral process.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gimpel follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Mr. Spiropoulos.

STATEMENT OF ANDREW C. SPIROPOULOS

Mr. SPIROPOULOS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the

committee for inviting me.

The central legal question regarding H.J. Res. 53 is whether such

an amendment is necessary or whether such a change may be

made by statute.

In order to answer this question with regard to aliens residing

in the United States, one must consider legal and illegal aliens separately. It is my opinion that section 2 of the 14th amendment stating that apportionment must be based on the whole number of persons in each State rather than citizenship requires that aliens legally residing in the United States be counted toward the number

of persons used for apportionment purposes.

The Constitution therefore must be amended if legal aliens are

to be excluded from the number of persons counted for apportion

purposes. The Constitution does provide, however, the national

government some discretion to determine who is truly an inhabitant of a State for the purposes of apportionment.

It is my opinion that it is within the legitimate discretion of Congress to instruct the Census Bureau by statute to exclude illegal

aliens from the census conducted for apportionment purposes. In

addition to evidence gleaned from the records of the framing and

ratification of both the Constitution in 1787 and the 14th amendment, this interpretation is confirmed by the unbroken practice of

the national government. With regard to legal aliens, the government has always sought to count all inhabitants, not only citizens.

It has never been disputed, either by members of the government

or legal commentators that legal aliens taking up legal residence

in the United States are inhabitants of the State in which they reside. They pay taxes, may consume the full range of government

services and, as demonstrated by the level of protection afforded

them under the equal protection clause, are, except for the privileges directly flowing from citizenship, established members of society. This longstanding practice and understanding not only constitute evidence of the original meaning of the provisions, they

should lead a reasonable court to presume that legal and political

institutions and practices have been established upon the reasonable expectation that such practices, absent extraordinary circumstances, will continue.

The question of whether the Constitution requires that aliens residing illegally in the United States be counted is far more difficult.

Whether illegal aliens are necessarily included in ‘‘the whole number of persons in each State’’ is not clearly resolved by either the

original meaning of the text or the intent of the drafters. The

Framers of the provisions at issue did not know of or contemplate

the problem of illegal immigration. We do know, however, that the

Framers’ understanding of ‘‘persons in each State’’ was based on

the notion that such a person was a demonstrated inhabitant of

that jurisdiction. This concept of ‘‘inhabitant’’ is not self-defining.

The legislature and the executive operating subject to that legislature’s authority must define it. The census-taking authorities in

the past have exercised discretion regarding, for example, U.S.

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Military and diplomatic personnel residing overseas, foreign tourists and foreign diplomatic personnel residing in the United States.

This past practice demonstrates that the national government has

always exercised some discretion regarding who qualifies as an inhabitant for the purpose of census-taking.

Unlike with legal aliens, one cannot conclude that illegal aliens

must be considered inhabitants of a State. Given their liability to

expeditious deportation, the limited constitutional protections afforded to them, their necessary avoidance of the regular interaction

between residents and government entities and, perhaps most importantly, their refusal to consent to the fundamental laws and

norms of this society, it cannot be said that the Constitution mandates that illegal aliens are sufficiently connected to a particular

State to be considered an inhabitant of it.

It is certainly true that the national government has, without exception, chosen to this point to include illegal aliens in that definition. I do not offer any opinion as to the wisdom of this choice or

a different one. My contention is that, just as the government may

decide that illegal aliens are inhabitants, so it may decide that they

are not. Therefore, it is my opinion that the Congress may, by statute, instruct the Census Bureau to exclude illegal aliens from the

census conducted for apportionment purposes.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Spiropoulos follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Ms. Perales.

STATEMENT OF NINA PERALES

Ms. PERALES. Chairman Turner and members of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census, I

am Nina Perales, Southwest regional counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund [MALDEF]. We are a

nonpartisan organization founded in Texas in 1968 to defend and

protect Latino civil rights, including voting rights.

Thank you for inviting me to testify regarding House Joint Resolution 53.

Restricting apportionment to citizens as H.J. Res. 53 proposes

contravenes the intent of the Framers of the 14th amendment. Section 2, clause one of the 14th amendment, which was adopted to

override the infamous three-fifths rule by which slaves were not

counted as full persons for the purposes of apportionment, has

never restricted congressional representation to citizens only.

The Framers of the 14th amendment could have restricted representation by limiting the numbers used for apportionment by a

variety of factors, including race, gender or nationality. Instead,

they chose to apportion the seats in the House of Representatives

based upon total population, despite the existence of a substantial

foreign-born population in the United States in the 1860’s, a foreign-born population larger than that in the United States today.

Ensuring that congressional representation flows to all people

equally is sound public policy. Each individual, regardless of

whether he or she can currently exercise the franchise, should receive the benefits of representation by their elected officials.

A congressional representative serves as more than just the voice

of the people who can vote or of those people who voted for him

or her during the last election. Congressional representatives serve

all individuals in their districts, including children and other nonvoters, by bringing critical resources to the district and representing the economic and social interests of all who live in the district.

The primary effect of H.J. Res. 53 will be to strip representation

from U.S. citizens. It will shift congressional seats away from highpopulation States that are composed overwhelmingly of U.S. citizens but which also contain higher numbers of noncitizens than

other States. Texas, my State, is one such State. If apportionment

were conducted today based on total population, Texas would receive an additional congressional seat, and each Member of Congress from Texas would represent approximately 664,000 people.

H.J. Res. 53 would deny Texas that congressional seat, forcing an

extra 20,000 people into the district of each member of the Texas

delegation. In effect, 19.6 million U.S. citizens living in Texas

would have less representation in Congress.

Furthermore, stripping representation from States with noncitizens necessarily has a disparate impact upon Latino U.S. citizens.

More than one-half of legal immigration is family based. And

among legal immigrants who come to the United States to be with

their family, most are from Mexico. Because many of these legal

immigrants are living and working today in predominately Latino

communities across the United States, this measure will serve to

shift representation away from States containing more Latino citiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:38 Mar 28, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00124 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\26074.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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zens and permanent legal residents to other States with higher citizen populations and fewer Latinos.

Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada, New York and Texas all

have in common substantial Latino populations, and all would be

worse off with a restrictive apportionment scheme in which noncitizens are excluded. Those who want to restrict apportionment suggest that the number of voters in an election is primarily determined by the number of citizens in the congressional district. In

truth, voter registration and turnout is by far the great determinant of the weight of a voter’s vote, not the number of citizens

residing in an electoral district. It is utterly groundless to suggest

that noncitizenship is responsible for the voter turnout levels of

U.S. citizens.

The 14th amendment, which declared the quality of all persons

under the law, should not be changed to restrict congressional representation of citizens, particularly racial minority citizens, based

on the State in which they happen to live. H.J. Res. 53 serves no

other legitimate policy purpose and places unwarranted burdens

upon the congressional representatives in disfavored States.

I want to add on a personal note that I am offended by the interchangeable use of noncitizen and undocumented immigrant in this

hearing. To conflate those two terms suggests that all immigrants

in the United States are criminal aliens and law breakers. It is offensive to me, and it is offensive to the Latino community. I strongly urge you to reject House Joint Resolution 53.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Perales follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

And when I began my opening comments as the chairman of this

committee, Federalism and the Census, census having the obligation for actually the count that results in apportionment, I made

clear that this is an informational hearing, that the issues that we

wanted to discuss related to the impact of the proposed constitutional amendment, but also because I truly believe that most citizens aren’t aware of how the current apportionment process works

and its impact on the fact that the Constitution and its application

currently looks to persons instead of citizens.

This is an important function that has nothing to do with the

issue of policy. Policy is whether or not we should do this or should

not do this, and the impacts that it would have.

It includes the discussion of the historical perspective: Why did

our Founding Fathers do this? What was the intent? What was the

expectation? Was it intended? But the realty is that, on a nonpolicy

perspective, that most of what we are talking about is a straight,

mathematical application. The information aspect of what happens

as a result of counting noncitizens versus counting merely citizens

is not an issue that goes to policy. It is a mathematical outcome

of which we should all be aware, whether we are for or against the

changing of that application.

So going to those purposes I am going to go through this panel

in this like manner that I did the other to make certain that we

have a narrowing of the issues because policy is very important

and that is something that will really go beyond this hearing. The

purpose of the hearing is to inform as to the application of the current method of apportionment.

My first question goes to the issue to make certain that no one

has any belief that there is any underlying sinister purpose here,

and that goes to the question of asking each of the members of the

panel whether or not they believe that noncitizens should be allowed to vote, my expectation being that we will all share the value

that noncitizens should not be allowed to vote.

I will begin with you, Dr. Prewitt.

Mr. PREWITT. Correct.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Killian.

Mr. KILLIAN. With one reservation, I would say. There was——

Mr. TURNER. Would you take the mic, please.

Mr. KILLIAN. Excuse me. There was the historical practice after

the Civil War and extending into the first part of the 20th century

of a number of States, primarily Western States which wanted to

encourage immigration into them, of allowing noncitizens to vote

provided that they swore an oath——

Mr. TURNER. I’m not asking from a historical perspective, I am

asking from your personal belief. You personally believe noncitizens should not be allowed to vote.

Mr. KILLIAN. As a general matter I do not believe that.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Gimpel.

Mr. GIMPEL. I agree.

Mr. SPIROPOULOS. Yes.

Mr. TURNER. Ms. Perales.

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Ms. PERALES. MALDEF takes the same position but also recognizes that certain States and localities have exercised the option to

enfranchise noncitizens.

Mr. TURNER. The purpose—so no one becomes confused—of this

hearing is to discuss voting by noncitizens.

A second issue, counting of noncitizens in the apportionment of

congressional district results in the dilution of the votes of citizens

in Congress. Doctor Prewitt.

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, just as the noncounting of felons dilutes the

vote of those who are felon districts, the noncounting of the young

rewards those districts which have more elderly than the young.

Mr. TURNER. We count the young. You were good on the other

one.

Mr. PREWITT. No, no, no.

Mr. TURNER. In the census for citizenship.

Mr. PREWITT. I’m saying that a district which happens to be composed of the elderly has its vote diluted compared to a district with

a higher percentage of young people in.

Mr. TURNER. I understand now what you are saying.

We have limited time.

Mr. Killian.

Mr. KILLIAN. I would agree with that.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Gimpel.

Mr. GIMPEL. Yes.

Mr. SPIROPOULOS. Sure.

Mr. TURNER. Ms. Perales.

Ms. PERALES. No, the statement is not correct.

Mr. TURNER. We will get back to that then because the issue is

a mathematical one here. If you count only citizens, first count citizens and noncitizens, mathematically it would have to be a dilution

because you are spreading representation over a larger number. So

it’s mathematical, it’s not a policy issue, not a value system, Ms.

Perales. Would you still say that it does not dilute the vote of citizens—I’m sorry, does not dilute the representation of citizens in

Congress?

Ms. PERALES. Respectfully, Representative Turner, Mr. Chairman, it is with respect to representation and not the vote.

Mr. TURNER. I misstated it when I restated it to you but my first

question was representation of citizens in Congress. Would you

agree with that?

Ms. PERALES. We would disagree because representation flows to

all individuals, not only to voters, and thus counting all

persons——

Mr. TURNER. I asked whether mathematically the counting of

noncitizens does or does not dilute the votes of citizens in Congress?

Ms. PERALES. It does not dilute the votes of citizens.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you for your answer.

Going to the third question then, because the appropriation process impacts the allocation of electoral votes, the counting of noncitizens has a potential for the impact of the outcome of Presidential

elections.

Doctor Prewitt.

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Mr. PREWITT. Just like in the noncounting of anyone will have

that impact. Of course, by definition.

Mr. TURNER. Mathematical.

Mr. PREWITT. Vote dilution is an incredibly important issue and

I am glad we are discussing it. There are costs to trying to manage

it.

Mr. TURNER. That’s question No. 5. Only on this one. Mr. Killian.

Mr. KILLIAN. Yes, with that qualification.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Gimpel.

Mr. GIMPEL. Yes.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Spiropoulos.

Mr. SPIROPOULOS. Yes.

Mr. TURNER. Ms. Perales.

Ms. PERALES. Yes. If I understand the question I’m answering.

Mr. TURNER. The fourth thing is that the counting of noncitizens

having an impact on apportionment and representation then in

Congress has an impact on the balance of power between the

States in Congress.

Mr. Prewitt.

Mr. PREWITT. Yes.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Killian.

Mr. KILLIAN. Yes.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Gimpel.

Mr. GIMPEL. Yes.

Mr. SPIROPOULOS. Yes.

Mr. TURNER. Ms. Perales.

Ms. PERALES. Yes.

Mr. TURNER. The fifth is an open question to give you the opportunity to discuss what you have been wanting to discuss. Dr.

Prewitt; briefly, if we could give each of you an opportunity to talk

on the issue of the impacts. This is if we were to do this, what

would be the impacts. You can talk about the impacts on populations and individuals, you can talk about the purity of the census

as it is currently viewed. But if each of you would take a moment

on that then we will turn to Mrs. Maloney.

Mr. PREWITT. Yes. It would be repetitious. It will have an impact

on quality, impact on fairness. It simply will have that impact.

That’s empirical, factual; mathematical, if you will, in your vocabulary. I also think it will have a big impact upon the reception of

the census in our body politic today and I think that has a down

side that this committee really ought to consider.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Killian.

Mr. KILLIAN. In light of the restraints on me by my service, I

don’t think I can answer that question.

Mr. TURNER. We’ll accept that.

Mr. Gimpel.

Mr. GIMPEL. I think it would strengthen the value of citizenship

and incidentally also stimulate a pretty rapid move toward naturalization. It would provide quite an incentive to naturalize, I

think. Just off the top of my head those are two things that would

come of it.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Spiropoulos.

Mr. SPIROPOULOS. Speaking with regard to the constitutional

amendment as opposed to the statute that I had discussed, I think

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if you did the constitutional amendment you would be shifting the

basis of representation in the original Constitution the way the

framers envisioned it. That would be the underlying change if you

exclude legal aliens. The other sets of impacts discussed earlier

would be on the census. I think you might have great damage to

the census if you were to tie census taking to questions regarding

immigration.

Mr. TURNER. Ms. Perales.

Ms. PERALES. Because the exercise of the franchise is analytically

distinct from congressional representation which flows to all persons through total count in apportionment, the effect of the proposed measure would be more to shift representation away from

the States that I described in my testimony and would have little

to no impact on the exercise of the franchise or what is referred

to as vote dilution. Those are really separate effects, one of which

is great and the other which is small.

Mr. TURNER. Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much. I would like to ask Dr.

Prewitt and I’d like you to respond to this notion that if we exclude

some subset of the population in the census for apportionment purposes, what other groups might be considered for exclusion down

the road? I would like everyone to answer. What other groups

besides——

Mr. PREWITT. Well, I would worry that felons might be considered excludable as a category that we obviously don’t let vote in

many of our States. I mean ex-felons, not necessarily those in prison but ex-felons who have done their time would be excluded. That

would be a candidate group. I have no idea what we would finally

decide about those psychologically incapable of exercising a vote because of their mental processes. There have been times in this society when we have worried about excluding the so-called insane. I

am not predicting that would happen but there are categories of

our population simply less well integrated than other categories

and I would worry if we start down this road of making distinctions

at this starting point of the representational process, that it opens

the opportunity to make distinctions along other lines.

Mrs. MALONEY. Does anyone else have ideas of who might be excluded. Would you think they might want to exclude the homeless,

possibly those that are in hospitals? Can you think of any other

subset that might be considered to be excluded, Mr. Killian?

Mr. KILLIAN. The matter of ex-felons, convicted persons who are

felons confined in prison is something of a problem in some States

because prisons generally are constructed in rural areas of the

State so that the counting of the prison population within that

county enlarges the county’s representation, so that might enter

into some of this.

Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Gimpel, can you think of other subsets?

Mr. GIMPEL. I think, Representative Maloney, you made a very

perceptive point in response to the first panel when you called our

attention to the fact that there are different types of vote dilution

and I think that what we would have to do as these cases come

up, if someone says votes are being diluted for this reason or that

is take them on a case by case basis as we are in this particular

instance, discuss it, see where it goes. But I think you are right,

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there are different types of vote dilution. Do we want to change the

Senate scheme of apportionment. Well, remember that the Founding Fathers with respect to the U.S. Senate thought that States

needed to be represented in the Federal system as administrative

units. So they deserve representation as units of government administration, but certainly that’s a case, as you pointed out in response to the first panel, of a kind of vote dilution. That does trouble some people. That should be taken up in a series of hearings

too, perhaps.

Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Spiropoulos.

Mr. SPIROPOULOS. I think it’s important not to confuse issues

here. I think it is important to focus really on the underlying problem that is motivating all this, which is the question of illegal immigration. There is no one who seriously wants to exclude any

group of our society from participation of voting or being represented. The question here is to focus on the problem, very difficult problem and hard to deal with and I think that’s what we

need to focus on.

The second thing is that the national government has always exercised discretion in administering the census and determining who

an inhabitant is. You cannot get away from the fact that you have

to make choices, the administration will have to make decisions on

how to define the key terms that underlie the scheme that you are

administering.

Mrs. MALONEY. Well, I agree with you that we have to exercise

discretion. That’s why I’m asking this question. Maybe we would

like to exercise discretion in other categories. But I would differ

with your first statement that the hearing is about immigration.

This hearing is about apportionment and representation and possibly the dilution of a vote.

I would like to ask Ms. Perales, in your testimony you mentioned

that at one time the Census Bureau counted Blacks as three-fifths

of a person, is that correct?

Ms. PERALES. No, apportionment. Slaves.

Mrs. MALONEY. Counted slaves as three-fifths of a person, is that

correct?

Ms. PERALES. That is correct.

Mrs. MALONEY. Do you think that possibly we could consider counting women less since they are paid $0.79 to the dollar. That’s

a Bureau of Labor Statistics point that they are paid $0.79 to the

dollar for like work. Do you think that a woman could be counted

less in the census as a discretionary movement?

Ms. PERALES. Once you unhook representation from the people,

all persons, as required by the Constitution, once you unlink those

concepts the extremes are without limit in terms of how you would

take away representation from groups of people.

To answer the previous question, the largest structural group of

nonvoters obviously is children. Why not exclude children from apportionment? They cannot vote. We will catch up to them later

after they turn 18. Why not exclude——

Mrs. MALONEY. So we have gotten felons, prisoners, the insane,

and those in insane asylums, now possibly children, since they

can’t vote, maybe we shouldn’t count children for apportionment.

Can you think of any other area?

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Ms. PERALES. Yes, the most frightening extreme is that one carries the idea of voting or the exercise of the franchise all the way

to become synonymous with representation, meaning that you don’t

get counted for apportionment unless you’re a registered voter or

don’t get counted unless you turned out in the last election or, God

forbid, that you voted for the decumbent.

Mrs. MALONEY. What about Alzheimer’s? Do you think they

would put that in there? One of my good friends, she’s 61 years old,

she has just come down with Alzheimer’s. Maybe she shouldn’t be

counted because she really has some challenges now. Do you think

Alzheimer’s could go into that list too?

Ms. PERALES. Certainly any limitation once you stop giving representation to the people is within the bounds of imagination and,

by the way, would all have to be listed on the short form of the

census.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much.

Mr. Killian, I would like to go back to your testimony on constitutional amendments. And I recall that in 1993 an amendment

that began in the 1700’s was finally ratified. And you talked about

the time limits being very important. How many amendments have

passed without a time limit and how many amendments have had

a time limit? When did they start or when did Congress start a

time limit?

Mr. KILLIAN. The first amendment with a time limit issue was

the 18th amendment imposing prohibition, which was proposed

and ratified roughly around 1920. The reason that time limitations

began to come in was there was a debate with regard to whether

amendments that had been proposed a long time ago were still

alive and whether States could still act, and the idea was to begin

placing time limitations in the amendment. Of course the old

amendments did not have a time limitation. And with respect to

the present 27th amendment, so-called Madison amendment which

was 1 of the 12 amendments proposed by Congress in 1789, which

10 were ratified and became the Bill of Rights, that was still of interest to some people because it provided for a required layover between the time Congress voted for a pay increase, required intervening election before it would take effect.

And from time to time a State or two States ratified, and finally

in 1992, 1993 enough States had ratified over the long period of

time so that the amendment was ratified. The only question was:

Was it validly ratified because of the amount of time that had run?

And Congress, both Houses of Congress passed resolutions saying

yes, it had been, and the executive branch official responsible for

certifying it, the Archivist of the United States, certified it.

Mrs. MALONEY. I want to thank all of the panelists and your historic understanding is important. All of your testimony has really

deepened my understanding. I think once you start down this road

of disqualifying or not counting certain people, it certainly opens up

the possibility that other people will not be counted, and I think

it is a very, very serious question and personally I do not think

that we should move away from our Founding Fathers, who directed this country so brilliantly, that everyone should be counted.

Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Mrs. Miller.

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Mrs. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I might mention, and

I appreciate the historical perspective that we have talked about

today. I think this is really a very interesting debate and I am a

person who believes in the goodness of the American people and

that we will come to the right decision to ensure freedom, liberty,

democracy, protection for all American citizens and has been stated

here by a couple of our panelists, that we should honor the original

intent of our Founding Fathers.

Actually, the original language, if we should honor the intent of

our Founding Fathers, the original language said we were to count

all free persons, including those bound to a term of service, minus

Indians not taxed, plus three-fifths of other persons, meaning

slaves. So I honor our Founding Fathers, although I don’t honor

that part of their thinking. So I think it is appropriate for us to

amend the Constitution to protect all American citizens, and that

is what I am proposing with this resolution.

I do not see this as a partisan issue in any way, perhaps a regional issue, but it is a nonpartisan issue in my mind. It is simply

an issue of fairness, it is a fundamental caveat to our democracy,

which is the one man, or one woman as I say, one vote. I think that

is very important and I think this goes right to the heart of that.

And Mr. Gimpel had mentioned that it was his observation that

perhaps seeing this resolution pass and this amendment to our

Constitution pass would actually be perhaps an impetus, give immigrants another incentive to become American citizens, and he

had made that comment and I guess I would ask the rest of the

panel if you feel that could be a consequence of passing this. Start

with Dr. Prewitt.

Mr. PREWITT. Historically immigrant groups do naturalize at

roughly a pace which I could describe historically in detail, but

they do gradually naturalize, they learn English, they buy homes,

they intermarry across the boundaries, as the Italians and Irish

and Poles, so forth, as today the immigrants are, the Hispanics are

and Asians and so forth. So I don’t see this as an extra incentive

whatsoever to the naturalization process. I think that will unfold

in due course.

We have some 30,000 noncitizens now in the military, and I do

think that because they are in the military and the President

agrees we should hasten their citizenship, but we will take them

even if they decide not to naturalize.

And I do worry about the no taxation without representation

point. The Boston Tea Party is a part of our founding mythology,

if you will, and it’s odd at this time in our history we would go back

to no taxation without representation.

So I guess I am not worried about the naturalization phenomenon. I just see it unfolding in due course as it always has. The second and third generation is very different from the first, and so

forth.

So I see the opposite; that this will create an anxiety in this population at the current time and an anger at the Federal Government, especially among the Hispanic population, which I would

hope we would take into consideration as we consider this amendment.

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you. Anyone else have a comment on that?

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Mr. SPIROPOULOS. It would be an incentive to naturalization. I

don’t think it would be an internal incentive that you believe because you do not have representation that you needed to be naturalized. I think what you would have happen is a huge political organization in those districts that would lose out. They would organize people to become naturalized in order to make sure that their

votes were counted and did not get diluted.

Mr. GIMPEL. I would say some of the immigrant advocacy groups

that we have heard from today would likely turn their attention to

bolstering the political advocacy of their grass roots constituencies.

That would probably be a good thing. We have heard for 15 or 20

years about how civic engagement in the country has been in decline, with the 2004 election being an odd exception, a blip on the

screen. Wouldn’t it be nice if we saw a great stimulus to civic engagement as a result of adoption of this amendment?

Ms. PERALES. I believe that people naturalize for personal reasons, mainly out of a love for this country and the desire to take

that final step to participate as a U.S. citizen. The relatively remote effects on apportionment would not necessarily be foremost in

someone’s mind as they begin the process of naturalization.

Certainly the groups that are committed to the Latino community strive today to increase naturalization as much as possible. I

am not sure that such a change as the one proposed today would

provide any greater resources toward that effort than are already

going to that effort.

Mr. PREWITT. May I add a footnote to Congressman Miller’s

question?

Mrs. MILLER. Go ahead.

Mr. PREWITT. I did meet with leaders of the Catholic Church in

preparation for the census 2000 and also MALDEF leaders. The

question I put is why do you care so much about whether we count

the noncitizens, and their explicit answer was we see that as a step

toward naturalization because it makes them more comfortable

dealing with the Federal Government and that is a very important

step in the evolution of our constituency. So the Catholic Church,

which for years had a standoff relationship to the census for fear

it would be tainted with sort of government surveillance, and so

forth, changed its mind in 2000 exactly on the argument you are

making. I actually do believe this amendment would set that back

rather than move it forward.

Mrs. MILLER. Mr. Chairman, I am not going to ask any more

questions. I appreciate your time. When I had an opportunity to

testify I think I laid out my reasoning for this resolution very clearly at that point and I know others may have some questions here

but I do think that this again is an issue of basic fairness.

I really think, although there have been no polls that I am aware

of, if you took a poll in our Nation right now about whether or not

people agree that illegal immigrants should have the same representation in the U.S. Congress as American citizens, it would be

about 90–10 in favor of this resolution. I honestly believe that.

Again, I believe in the goodness of the American people and their

ability to ferret out in very simplistic terms what is the appropriate

course of action to strengthen our Nation and continue our course.

Thank you very much.

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Mr. TURNER. I recognize Linda Sanchez from California.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, and I want to thank Chairman Turner

for allowing me to join the Federalism and Census Subcommittee

on today’s hearing. I would also ask unanimous consent to submit

some opening statement for the record and——

Mr. TURNER. Also make any comments.

Ms. SANCHEZ. If that is granted, I would like to ask questions.

Mr. TURNER. Please.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Linda T. Sanchez follows:]

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Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you.

Ms. Perales, it seems to me that Latinos will be the ethnic group

most harmed by House Joint Resolution 53. In your analysis of the

resolution and its impact on apportionment do you agree that

Latinos would be the most harmed if this language was added to

the Constitution?

Ms. PERALES. Yes, I do agree.

Ms. SANCHEZ. What other groups might be harmed as well?

Ms. PERALES. Anglos or white Americans who happen to live in

and among the Latino community; for example, in my State of

Texas an Anglo person who lives in San Antonio or actually, frankly, because apportionment is done on a State by State, anybody

who lives in Dallas or Waco or El Paso or Austin is also going to

be disproportionately and negatively affected by this shift of representation.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you. Now I know one of the hot topics currently in Congress is immigration reform, and part of the inflammatory language that we hear from anti-immigrant groups is about

illegal immigrants and their harmful impact on communities, and

I think some of that rhetoric has influenced the debate about congressional apportionment. That’s my personal opinion.

Ms. Perales, will you please clarify for the record the distinction

between illegal immigrants and legal permanent residents as these

groups pertain to the joint resolution and to congressional apportionment.

Ms. PERALES. Well, certainly as worded the joint resolution says

nothing about undocumented immigrants and in fact does not

apply just to undocumented immigrants, so there is no connection

at all between the proposal and what is referred to as illegal immigration.

As has been pointed out earlier, there are over 18 million noncitizens living in the United States, the majority of whom are lawful

residents, either legal permanent residents or other types of lawful

residents. Because the proposal ignores or excludes from apportionment all noncitizens, it is grossly overbroad and strikes at many

people living lawfully in the United States today.

Ms. SANCHEZ. I am going to sort of hone in on that issue of legal

permanent residents. Somebody on this panel said that this hearing was about protecting all American citizens and that it was an

issue of basic fairness. Ms. Perales, are you aware that there are

many legal permanent residents that serve in the U.S. Military?

Ms. PERALES. Yes, I am. They are in uniform and risking their

lives every day for this Nation.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Some are currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Are you aware of that?

Ms. PERALES. Yes.

Ms. SANCHEZ. So if we are talking about protecting American

citizens would you or would you not say it’s a fair statement that

there are legal permanent residents who protect all American citizens?

Ms. PERALES. There are many.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Would you say in your opinion would it be basic

fairness to disallow a veteran who may be a legal permanent resident but not yet have taken the oath of citizenship, deny them

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being counted for purposes of apportionment? Would that sound

like basic fairness to you?

Ms. PERALES. It would be very unfair.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you.

Also, Mr. Gimpel stated earlier in his testimony that districts potentially with more citizens get less services from their Member of

Congress. Would you agree with that statement?

Ms. PERALES. No, I would not. No, I would not at all. Whether

you are a noncitizen or citizen, you walk down the streets, you turn

the lights on in your house, you have many needs and you do approach your Representative in Congress for services.

Ms. SANCHEZ. And I just want to hone in one last question on

the issue of children. Children under 18 are not of age to vote and

they receive services from their Federal Representatives, is that

not correct?

Ms. PERALES. Absolutely.

Ms. SANCHEZ. I’m interested in knowing if you could just sum up.

I’ll end my questioning with the answer to this one last question.

Earlier in the hearing the question was put to all of the panelists

that the counting of noncitizens for apportionment dilutes the vote

of citizens, and you disagreed with that and I would just like to

give you an opportunity please to explain why you disagree with

that.

Ms. PERALES. Thank you for the opportunity. Voting and the exercise of the franchise is limited to citizens. And if you look at the

14th amendment you can see it right there. It talks about citizens

and it talks about the franchise and it talks about people and all

persons, which is a much larger group than citizens. Noncitizens

don’t have a vote, noncitizens don’t exercise the franchise in any

way, and thus they cannot dilute the vote of those who are voting.

It’s not analytically possible. And it creates great confusion to mash

together the concepts of voting and representation.

Representation flows to all people under the Constitution. Elected officials will certainly appreciate the fact that they represent the

same number of people across a district within a State. That is a

very different concept than who votes and who chooses to vote in

any particular election.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Ms. Perales. I think you have done an

excellent job of educating on that, and I yield back.

Mrs. MALONEY. Could I add one question to her? I know that in

New York and I have read that in court cases in other States the

courts have upheld the responsibility of government to provide

services to all people; education and health care. Could you elaborate on that?

Ms. PERALES. Well, the courts have interpreted the 14th amendment’s reference to persons; for example, in the equal protection

clause, as truly persons, as all human beings, not to just citizens.

So for example since we all have the right to equal protection of

the laws, that means that whether or not you are a citizen or even

whether or not you are a documented or undocumented immigrant,

you are entitled to the equal protection of the laws. And the 14th

amendment similarly provides for apportionment based on all persons.

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One has to read the 14th amendment to be consistent within

itself in that all persons means exactly that, all persons. Undocumented immigrants are of course eligible for very few if any kind

of government services, although there is widespread misinformation on that point.

So I think the most important thing to understand is that the

14th amendment guarantees them protections with respect to liberties and freedoms as well as protection of the laws flows to all

persons.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you. Ms. Sanchez, I appreciate your return

to the issue of the dilution of the vote of citizens because actually

for my followup questions, Ms. Perales, I need to return to your

testimony. I have been discussing with staff and there is a lack of

agreement on some of the content of your testimony and I want to

clear that up.

We were talking about the mathematical impact of counting noncitizens for purposes of apportionment and I’d asked you the question as to whether or not the counting of noncitizens for purposes

of apportionment diluted the votes of citizens, and you answered

no, an answer which I agree and I believe is mathematically correct.

The subsequent question and clarification was a followup one

that the counting of noncitizens for the purposes of apportionment

deletes—let me try that again. Tongue-tied here—that the counting

of noncitizens for purposes of apportionment dilutes the representative vote of citizens in Congress, and my recollection is that you

had answered in the affirmative, which is in agreement with the

other seven panelists.

Ms. PERALES. No, that is not correct. I’m not sure how you modify the word ‘‘vote’’ with the word ‘‘representative.’’ It does not have

a meaning to me.

Mr. TURNER. Let’s discuss that for a moment. The question of

whether or not it dilutes the votes of citizens, since only citizens

are allowed to vote, noncitizens not appearing in the ballot box to

vote, the pool of those counted are only citizens. When noncitizens

are counted for the purposes of apportionment, the pool gets larger,

and then as Representatives, which are a fixed number of Representatives, are then allocated across the sea of the individuals

that are counted, both citizens and noncitizens, the impact vote on

the representative vote of citizens, those in Congress, is diminished.

If you count a smaller group, only citizens, then the representative vote in Congress of citizens would increase. That is a mathematical equation of which all other seven members of the panels

two and three agreed, and my recollection was that you had agreed

in the affirmative with that.

Ms. PERALES. No, I do not agree the vote is diluted in any way.

Mr. TURNER. Would you please explain to me mathematically

how by counting a larger group versus a smaller group dilution

does not occur.

Ms. PERALES. Because apportionment is done based on total population. Representatives are distributed across the sea of people, as

you put it, equally, meaning there are roughly equal numbers of

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people in every congressional district. There are different proportions of citizens and noncitizens in each congressional district. Does

total population-based apportionment mean that congressional districts are comprised of different numbers of citizens? Yes, of course,

mathematically it does.

Mr. TURNER. So then you would have to agree that those citizens

that live in a congressional district that has a higher percentage

of citizens have a diluted representative vote in Congress versus a

congressional district that has a less percentage of citizens when

viewing it through the eyes of citizen representation only?

Ms. PERALES. No.

Mr. TURNER. How can that be?

Ms. PERALES. Because not everybody votes.

Mr. TURNER. It’s representation of vote issue. If I have more citizens that live in my district versus Candice Miller having less citizens, then when I sit in this chair, go to the House floor and vote,

my vote, which is one, and her vote, which is one, has behind it

more citizens, and she would have less citizens. So her citizens are

diluted with respect to versus—excuse me, mine are diluted than

her citizens. My citizens having only one, her citizens being less,

having only one.

Ms. PERALES. I cannot agree that the citizens are diluted. What

it does mean, and I will agree with you, is that congressional districts might have more citizens in them and less citizens, more

children in them and less children, more felons in them and less

felons in them, but I do not agree that this has any substantial impacts on the weight of their vote, which is what vote dilution is.

Mr. TURNER. We’re just going to have to disagree because the

logical conclusion of your first statements to me seem to conclude

that dilution, but I certainly understand. Do we have any other?

Mr. PREWITT. I do have to change my answer to that question because you actually changed the terms of it in your response.

Mr. TURNER. Your answer will stand to my original question you

received. If you want to say how you now want to distinguish, but

your original answer stands.

Mr. PREWITT. Representation and voting are simply different.

There’s no dilution of representation. I heard in this reframing of

the question you’re focused on representation, not voting.

Mr. TURNER. Their representation is their vote in Congress,

which is the question that I asked you. To that you answered yes.

Mr. PREWITT. You cannot dilute representation insofar as representation is distributed across the entire population because that

is the nature of the system. There is no concept by which you could

dilute representation.

Mr. TURNER. By counting noncitizens there are congressional districts that have less citizens in them. You agreed with that?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, yes.

Mr. TURNER. Therefore, their vote in Congress as citizens is

greater than a district that has more citizens?

Mr. PREWITT. But not the representation.

Mr. TURNER. The vote is representation, sir.

Ms. PERALES. That’s the problem of the way you framed the

question. You have turned representation into the issue of voting.

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Mr. TURNER. I will leave it with you of their votes in Congress,

which was your answer then in the affirmative.

Ms. Perales, as a result of that discussion do you have any

change to your answer?

Ms. PERALES. No. Only to point out that the framers recognized

the distinction between representation and the vote within the

14th amendment when they created it.

Mr. TURNER. Vote in the ballot box versus vote in Congress. I

would agree with you. Any closing comments or additional questions for any Members?

Ms. SANCHEZ. One quick followup question. If you accept the

chairman’s discussion that we just had about greater number of

citizens, meaning less representation, I am using his terminology

but that’s the way he phrased it, would then it seem, Mr. Prewitt

and Ms. Perales, an issue of basic fairness that somebody who was

elected with a lower percentage of the total citizens of their district

who voted, that they should get the same representation in terms

of vote in the Congress as another Member who had a higher percentage of citizens who voted in their district?

Mr. PREWITT. That’s exactly the issue of conflating voting with

representation. The system of political representation that our

founders created did not rest upon voter turnout, it did not rest

upon distinctions of citizenship, it simply rested on no distinctions

other than number of people. We presume in our system of political

representation that you as an elected Representative of your district have a responsibility for all of the people in that district.

That’s what we presume. And so whether they vote—if only one

person votes and it’s you and you elect yourself, you still have a

responsibility to represent another 649 or 73,000 people.

Ms. PERALES. I have nothing to add to that answer.

Ms. SANCHEZ. Fabulous. Thank you. I yield back.

Mr. TURNER. Any other questions or comments? If not, before I

adjourn I would like to thank all of our members of the panel, our

distinguished witnesses that have participated today. I appreciate

your willingness to share your knowledge and thoughts with us

and I would also like to thank my colleagues for their participation

today. House Joint Resolution 53 is a very interesting proposal that

gives food for thought. I would like to give special thanks to Congresswoman Candice Miller for her time and her testimony today.

In the event that there may be additional questions that we did

not have time for today, the record shall remain open for 2 weeks

for submitting questions and answers. Thank you all. We stand adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:38 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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