As the 2024 presidential election looms and a surge of illegal immigrants continues at the southern border, Republicans are actively championing measures to ensure election integrity. However, their efforts are encountering resistance from Democrats, who recently rejected proposed legislation aiming to exclude illegal immigrants from census counts used for apportionment of House seats and Electoral College representation.
Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) introduced an amendment to a $460 billion spending package, seeking to mandate the inclusion of a U.S. citizenship question in future censuses conducted by the Census Bureau. The proposed legislation aimed to prevent illegal immigrants and non-U.S. citizens from being factored into the determination of congressional districts and Electoral College apportionment. Despite Hagerty’s efforts, the bill faced staunch opposition from 51 Democrats and Independents.
In a vote, 45 Republicans supported the legislation, with the exception of Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Hagerty expressed disappointment in the unanimous Democratic opposition, asserting that their stance indicates a strategy to leverage illegal aliens and sanctuary cities to bolster their political power. He emphasized the importance of the legislation in safeguarding the rights of every American’s voice and pledged to persist in advocating for the issue in the Senate.
The proposed bill mirrors a Trump-era initiative that sought to include a citizenship question in the 2020 census. Democrats had criticized Trump’s plan, contending that questioning an individual’s citizenship was inappropriate and designed to favor Republicans in subsequent elections. The recent Democratic rejection of the legislation signals an ongoing partisan divide on the issue of addressing illegal immigration in the context of electoral representation.
