I’m very interested to see how this plays out. I worked for the Census Bureau for six years and who got counted in the decennial census was always very contentious. After every census the Bureau would be sued by several states who believed their population were undercounted (states always want to maximize their population to get the maximum number of congressional seats). The Census’ position always was that the Constitution states that they are to count the number of “persons” in each state without any other qualifiers. There is a historical basis for this since slaves were not citizens and they were to be counted (the 3/5 rule would be mute otherwise). Of course slaves were here legally. I suspect the legal folks at the Census Bureau are scrambling right now and I don’t know how they are going to officially react. We live in interesting times for sure.
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Even taking the 3/5th act into account, I suspect that the Framers would have considered counting millions of people who flooded into the country illegally to be more than a bridge too far.
Why should illegals be given representation? Someone evades border security and demands their rights? By what mechanism do they acquire rights? Someone who is merely in the physical US under a temporary visa does have some rights but they damn sure can’t vote or get welfare or Social security.
When this inevitably ends up with the Supreme Court I’m hoping what you said is the logic that allows him to rerun the census.
Oh, the census can be run again, no doubt about that. The question is whether the results will be used.