Why is the Federal Government Reducing Missouri’s Political Influence?

January 2013, Missouri will have 11% less voting power in the U.S. House of Representatives than it does today.  On December 17, 2012, Missouri will have 9% less voting power for President and Vice-President then it did in the 2008 election. 

Why has the Federal Government done this to Missouri? 

In part, the answer is found in the text of the U.S. Constitution and in part due to the personal preferences of members of the Executive branch of the United States. 

Let me explain in non-technical, non-legal language. 

They counted illegal immigrants and added them into the Census count used to determine how many seats each state gets in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Since a state’s vote in the Electoral College is calculated by the number of House seats plus two Senate seats, the more illegal immigrants counted in a state, the more voting power that state gets in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the Electoral College. 

The 2010 Census determined that the U.S. population number to be used to apportion the 435 seats in Congress was 309,183,463.  That means the population of each Congressional district is calculated to be 710,767 people (309,183,463 divided by 435). 

Here is where the voters of Missouri are getting taken advantage of by federal bureaucrats.  Despite the fact that Missouri’s population increased by 7% from 2000 to 2010, by counting the 10 to 14 million illegal immigrants (most of whom are in other states) those other states appeared to have had greater population increases than Missouri.  Therefore, Missouri lost a seat and will only have eight seats instead of our current nine. 

Here are the numbers which show how close Missouri was to retaining our ninth seat. 

The population of Missouri is listed as 6,011,478.  Divide the state population by 710,767 (the size of a new Congressional District) and you get 8.457 seats.  Missouri was short 30,038 people of retaining our ninth seat. 

The population of Texas is listed as 25,268,418.  Divide the state population by 710,767 and you get 35.55 seats.  Texas had 36,204 more people than it needed to gain a fourth additional seat.  (Texas goes from 32 to 36 seats.)   

The population of California is listed as 37,341,989.  Divide the state population by 710,766.58 and you get 52.537 seats.  California had 26,743 more people than it needed to retain its 53rd seat.  

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Texas and California both have huge populations of illegal immigrants. I suspect that the illegal immigrants counted in Texas or California (or some other state) account for our diminished political representation in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the Electoral College. 

Counting illegal immigrants is a personal preference of the federal executive branch and the Washington political establishment.  It is not a requirement of the Constitution. 

On May 2, 2006, Montana Senator Conrad Burns (R) proposed a bill (which never passed) excluding illegal immigrants from the Census number used to apportion seats in the House of Representatives.  Senator Conrad said, “. . . we will be looking at upwards of 15 million illegal aliens in the United States for the 2010 Census, maybe more, and the result will be more seats lost in states that have actually increased in population of law-abiding U.S. citizens.” 

The Senators prediction has proved painfully true for Missouri. 

Here is more information:

The United States Constitution is our highest law.  At the “Constitutional Convention” the issue of state representation in the proposed new government became a major sticking point, taking up weeks of discussion time.  Large population states asserted they were entitled to more representation in the legislature than small population states.  Small population states worried that the large population states would regularly out-vote them.  Roger Sherman, delegate from Connecticut, framed the "Connecticut Compromise” which proposed representation in the House of Representatives based on population, and equal representation in the Senate.  (At the time the Constitution was being written, each state had one vote in Congress and the Congressmen were appointed by their State Legislatures.) 

The Constitution, as adopted, by the states was very specific about state representation in the U.S. House of Representatives.  At the top of that document, Article One, Section Two, Paragraph Three, it stated, “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers . . .” 

This means, states get seats in the House of Representatives based on their population. 

In that same paragraph, the Constitution says, “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.” 

This sentence creates a Constitutional requirement to conduct a Census every ten years.  The Census count is how each state knows how many seats it is entitled to in the House of Representatives.  (There is no mention of using the Census for any other purpose.) 

(The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Enumeration:  To ascertain the number of : to count.)

Notice that the requirement is to count, not to estimate.

The Constitutional Convention writers specified there would be 65 members of the United States House of Representatives in the first meeting of Congress.  Each state was assigned a specific number of seats.  After the first Census, each state would be entitled to one seat per 30,000 population.  As the American population grew, more seats were added to the House of Representatives.  Finally, on August 8, 1911, Congress capped the number of members of the United States House of Representatives at 435 (Public Law 62-5).  From 1913 forward, Congressional Districts are made larger after each census rather than adding more districts and more Congressmen.