In all the furor about the 2020 census some fundamentals seems to get covered up with a lot of noise. But there are some basic questions that would seem to suggest what the right answer should be.

(I say “should” because there’s the additional problem of laws – which don’t need to be logical, laws being simply what has been passed by Congress and signed by the President, and courts, in which judges are free to act willy-nilly until some other, higher court, gets them back in line. There’s no easy way to address these two problems.)

Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution provides the foundation for a census every 10 years because it states that the distribution of Representatives among the states shall be based on a head count every 10 years.

The relevant text is:

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

This is amended by the 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th amendments, but they really don’t change the fundamental intent.

Since the first census there have been debates as to what information should and should not be collected. But, the central issue remains focused on the House of Representatives: how many will be given to each state.

The wording of the paragraph in article 1 is vague enough that one might read a lot into it, and various politicians have for the last two centuries. But the meaning is clear if we’re to be objective: the intent is and is to identify citizens.

The question that might be asked is whether the Founding Fathers – in any way – were interested in apportioning power based on the presence of people in the country by other than legal processes. To answer that question I think you need to go back and, well, look at the mission statement; it’s right there, in the preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The goal is to establish and organize a government for the people of the United States. But the people of the United States means citizens of the United States. In short, the question of what needs to be on the census devolves down to: How many citizens are there?

Look at it the other way: imagine if the question was interpreted to mean how many people are physically present, as has been argued. Present when? Present where? The final distillation of that version would suggest we should include in the census everyone in transit at airports.

And those who simply live here? Should we include in the census all folks who are living here? Should the North Korean Ambassador to the UN be included in the census? And if the argument is made that we’re highly mobile and that folks moving back and forth across the border should be included, then why stop at the border?

One boundary is as arbitrary as another. Why not conduct a census of New York City that includes the work force, even if they live in New Jersey? That would seem to make more sense if we accept the argument that the census should be used as the basis for passing out government funds for, say infrastructure.

In fact, those arguments, if looked at dispassionately, all unravel the more you pick at them.

We’re left with this: the census is intended to answer the simple question of the number of citizens in each state so that every 10 years we may apportion representatives as fairly as possible. One might even argue that the only question the government needs answered is a count of citizens in each state, and that all the other data, with which the government has grown very fond, is interesting, and “nice to have,” but it is not needed; it’s wanted.

What we need to know are the number of citizens.

Copyright 2019 Arrias
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