By JOHN S. BAKER AND ELLIOTT STONECIPHER,Wall Street Journal
ACORN Activists will be working as Census Bureau workers
Next year’s census will determine the apportionment of House members and Electoral College votes for each state. To accomplish these vital constitutional purposes,the enumeration should count only citizens and persons who are legal,permanent residents. But it won’t.
Instead,the U.S. Census Bureau is set to count all persons physically present in the country—including large numbers who are here illegally. The result will unconstitutionally increase the number of representatives in some states and deprive some other states of their rightful political representation. Citizens of “loser” states should be outraged. Yet few are even aware of what’s going on.
In 1790,the first Census Act provided that the enumeration of that year would count “inhabitants” and “distinguish” various subgroups by age,sex,status as free persons,etc. Inhabitant was a term with a well-defined meaning that encompassed,as the Oxford English Dictionary expressed it,one who “is a bona fide member of a State,subject to all the requisitions of its laws,and entitled to all the privileges which they confer.”