Counting illegal aliens in congressional apportionment creates a set of modern-day rotten boroughs — political districts with representatives who are elected by a pitifully small number of voters. Those who believe illegal aliens should count in apportionment say that they deserve representation, too. The 14th Amendment does call for apportionment to be based on “the whole number of persons” in each state. But we don’t count tourists or business travelers who are here legally; why should we count illegal aliens?

Oh, and by the way, counting illegal aliens helps Democrats. I wrote a story on this in NRODT two years ago. Here’s a key graf:

Aside from the compelling matter of principle involved, these apportionment schemes distort our politics in other ways: Democrats benefit. That’s because non-citizen apportionment allows the creation of congressional districts full of people who don’t have the right to vote — and Democrats almost always win in these places. Consider California’s 31st congressional district, where 41 percent of the inhabitants are non-citizens. Last year, Xavier Becerra — one of the most left-wing members of Congress — carried it by attracting fewer than 55,000 votes, despite its population of 639,000. In many congressional districts, the winner needs two times this level of support. Steve Sailer of UPI crunched the numbers for California’s whole delegation: In the eight districts won by Hispanics (all Democrats), an average of 80,000 voters went to the polls. In the other 45 districts, an average of 143,000 turned out — that’s 79 percent more.