GOP Platform At Odds with the U.S. Constitution

Rick Hasen: “Going mostly (but not completely) unnoticed is the following statement in the Republican Party platform: ‘In order to preserve the principle of one person, one vote, we urge our elected representatives to ensure that citizenship, rather than mere residency, be made the basis for the apportionment of representatives among the states.'”

“Currently, congressional districts are apportioned based upon total population. If Republicans were able to actually follow through on this, it would mean that areas with large Latino populations, where there are more non-citizens, would lose representation compared to whiter, more Republican districts. It would shift more power in Congress to the Republicans.”

“But there’s a problem with this aspirational plan, something called the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which provides in Section 2 that “Representatives 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.” Last time I checked, non-citizens were still “persons.” So maybe this part of the platform is an oblique call for a constitutional amendment?”