As the Hillary campaign tries to rally in the face of favorability numbers that must be causing more than a few sleepless nights at Camp Hillary and new financial boosts to Bernie Sanders’ campaign, the news for Democrats is not all discouraging. Apparently, there is a way that whomever the Democratic nominee, a Democrat can win the White House . . . with the help of illegal immigrants and a “glitch” in the Electoral College system.
Paul Goldman and Mark Rozell, writing at Politico, have put forth an interesting premise: “noncitizens decrease Republican chances of winning the White House next year.” In their article, entitled “Illegal Immigrants Could Elect Hillary,” Goldman and Rozell explain:
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.”
According to Goldman and Rozell, the “unique math undergirding the Electoral College” gives Hillary (they are presuming she’ll be the eventual Democrat nominee) an edge.
They write:
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.
Following is a brief video explaining the premise:
Goldman and Rozell explain that “four electoral votes statistically cast by noncitizens” and that these will fall in “must-win” Republican leaning states.
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.
Noting that “the key to Republican hopes to win 270 electoral votes next year therefore revolves around the three biggest swing states: Florida, Ohio and Virginia.,” Goldman and Rozell conclude that Florida is going to be key for the Republican nominee in 2016: “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.”
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY