Illegal Immigrants Could Elect Traitor Hillary Clinton By Skewing Electoral College

[Bradley K. Thurman]

Illegal immigrants—along with other noncitizens without the
right to vote—may pick the 2016 presidential winner. Thanks to
the unique math undergirding the Electoral College, the mere
presence of 11-12 million illegal immigrants and other
noncitizens here legally may enable them to swing the election
from Republicans to Democrats.

The right to vote is intended to be a singular privilege of
citizenship. But the 1787 Constitutional Convention rejected
allowing the people to directly elect their President. The
delegates chose instead our Electoral College system, under
which 538 electoral votes distributed amongst the states
determine the presidential victor. The Electoral College awards
one elector for each U.S. Senator, thus 100 of the total, and
D.C. gets three electors pursuant to the 23rd Amendment. Those
electoral numbers are unaffected by the size of the noncitizen
population. The same cannot be said for the remaining 435, more
than 80 percent of the total, which represent the members
elected to the House.

The distribution of these 435 seats is not static: they are
reapportioned every ten years to reflect the population changes
found in the census. That reallocation math is based on the
relative “whole number of persons in each state,” as the
formulation in the 14th Amendment has it. When this language was
inserted into the U.S. Constitution, the concept of an “illegal
immigrant,” as the term is defined today, had no meaning. Thus
the census counts illegal immigrants and other noncitizens
equally with citizens.

Since the census is used to determine the number of House seats
apportioned to each state, those states with large populations
of illegal immigrants and other noncitizens gain extra seats in
the House at the expense of states with fewer such “whole number
of persons.”

This math gives strongly Democratic states an unfair edge in the
Electoral College. Using citizen-only population statistics,
American University scholar Leonard Steinhorn projects
California would lose five House seats and therefore five
electoral votes.

New York and Washington would lose one seat, and thus one
electoral vote apiece. These three states, which have voted
overwhelming for Democrats over the latest six presidential
elections, would lose seven electoral votes altogether. The
GOP’s path to victory, by contrast, depends on states that would
lose a mere three electoral votes in total. Republican
stronghold Texas would lose two House seats and therefore two
electoral votes. Florida, which Republicans must win to reclaim
the presidency, loses one seat and thus one electoral vote.

But that leaves the electoral math only half done. The 10 House
seats taken away from these states would then need to be
reallocated to states with relatively small numbers of
noncitizens. The following ten states, the bulk of which lean
Republican, would likely gain one House seat and thus one
additional electoral vote: Iowa, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan,
Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma and
Pennsylvania.

Iowa has gone Democratic six out of the last seven times.
Michigan and Pennsylvania have both gone comfortably Democratic
in every election since 1992. But five states—Indiana,
Louisiana, Missouri, Montana and Oklahoma—all went by double-
digit margins to GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.
And Romney carried North Carolina by two percent while losing
nationally by nearly four percent, a large difference. Likewise,
despite solidly beating 2008 GOP nominee John McCain by seven
percent nationally, President Obama eked out a bare 0.3 percent
win in the Tar Heel State. The current Ohio polls also look
promising for the right GOP nominee, and no Republican has ever
won the Presidency without carrying the Buckeye State. There is
no plausible statistical path for the Republican Party’s nominee
to win an electoral majority without these states.

Accordingly, for analytic purposes, three of the states that
would gain electoral votes are Democratic. The remaining seven
are fairly put in the GOP column. Combining the two halves of
the citizen-only population reapportionment, states likely in
the Democratic column suffer a net loss of four electoral votes.
Conversely the must-win Republican leaning states total a net
gain of four electoral votes. These are the four electoral votes
statistically cast by noncitizens.

U.S. elections have been decided by far narrower margins. One
electoral vote decided the 1876 presidential election. A swing
of three electoral votes in 2000 would have elected Al Gore. A
glitch in the Electoral College system enabled Aaron Burr to
come within one vote of winning the presidency over Thomas
Jefferson in 1800. Though they can’t cast an actual ballot, we
effectively allow noncitizens to have an indirect, and possibly
decisive, say in choosing the President.

Three years ago, President Obama became the first Democrat in 76
years to win a second term with a repeat majority vote. Yet
Romney still won two-dozen states with a total of 206 electoral
votes. Based on current polling and historical trends, a
credible GOP ticket right now must be considered likely to carry
all the 24 Romney states and their 206 electoral votes. The key
to Republican hopes to win 270 electoral votes next year
therefore revolves around the three biggest swing states:
Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

Yet a credible future GOP nominee has reason to be hopeful.
Obama carried Florida last time by only 0.9 percent. Hillary
Clinton suffers from an upside down image among Sunshine State
voters, 37 percent having a favorable opinion but 57 percent
holding a negative one in a recent poll. She is in a statistical
tie with highly unpopular GOP hopeful Donald Trump and loses by
11 percent to former Governor Jeb Bush. Florida statistically
should be the easiest of these key swing states for the GOP to
win.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/illegal-
immigrants-could-elect-hillary-clinton-213216