Whether by accident or by design, President Trump has alighted upon the exact right solution for ascertaining the truest enumeration of American citizens. Not only that, but his workaround solution should have been done regardless of the recent opinion by the Supreme Court. That is, even if the Court had found that the administration could include the citizenship question in the census, Trump should still have directed his agencies, especially the Social Security Administration, to have their computer programmers write simple little programs to count up the people on their databases by citizen and all other categories.

Americans who care about citizenship or just the corruption of our data should rejoice over Pres. Trump’s announcement on July 11. And here’s what’s nifty about the president’s directive -- we don’t need to wait for 2020 to get a much better idea of how many citizens are in the country, we should be able to get that data very soon. One datum I’m anxious to learn is the number of U.S. citizens still residing in California, the state with the largest number of illegal aliens.

Americans are a highly mobile lot, and for quite some time now they’ve been fleeing California and New York for other states because of high taxes, cost of living, and undesirableness. Wouldn’t it be a kicker if Trump’s computer reports showed that those states are overrepresented in Congress? But here’s the real question for America: Should we be counting noncitizens to determine the number of congressional districts in the states? This citizen thinks not.

The number of illegal aliens in the country can only be an estimate. The number that gets bandied about is 11 million, but some think it could be twice that. Getting an exact count of those in our midst who shouldn’t be here isn’t likely to be provided by the census. Foreigners who have repeatedly snuck into our country and have been repeatedly deported aren’t likely to cooperate with the census. And if they do cooperate, they might tell census takers that they have a lot more children than they do, just so more federal money will come their way.

Here’s another nifty thing about the president’s directive: the counts on the computer reports can be compared to the counts on the census. That should give us a clearer idea of how accurate the census is, and whether we should continue conducting it in the way we have been. When it comes to counting citizens and legal residents, I’d say the computer reports we’ll be getting are the census.

For years now, I’ve been writing about using the federal databases to do the census and to establish voter registries. The feds are continually archiving and maintaining data on citizens, and have virtually all citizens on file already. There is the odd exception, like the case of the Schultz sisters, daughters of American citizens who had to take DNA tests to get their Social Security cards. But almost all Americans are registered with the feds (i.e. entered into the SSA database) and get their SSNs soon after birth and naturalization. That means citizens can be counted up at any time just by running a computer program.

Any professional in Information Technology who is not totally worthless will recognize the righteousness of the president’s solution. And these computer reports are going to be revealing. One thing they’ll reveal is whether or not the I.T. people in the central government are competent and can do their jobs.

Last September, Federal Computer Week (FCW) ran “GAO: $15.6 billion census cost estimate not reliable.” It seems the Government Accountability Office had taken issue with the Census Bureau’s $15.6 billion estimate of the cost of the 2020 census; it was $3B more than the initial projection. But why pay anything; let computers do the counting?

(In 2010, this writer wrote two articles that ran elsewhere which dealt with the census. Appearing at GOPUSA, “Counting Foreigners in the U.S. Census” quoted from a constitutional law professor who had qualms about the way the feds do the census: “The census has drifted far from its constitutional roots, and the 2010 enumeration will result in a malapportionment of Congress.” “The Senseless Census: A Solution” ran at James Glassman’s TCS Daily. Both articles are in line with the president’s workaround directive of July 11. If you want a different take on the census, you might read them.)

If one believes that apportionment should be based on the number of citizens in each state, then this problem with the census could be fixed by merely changing the word “persons” in the 14th Amendment, Section 2 to “citizens.” If we ever have an Article V convention, changing that word should be one of the first items on the agenda, because right now the sovereignty of the People, i.e. the citizens, is being drained away from them by the way we do the stupid census.

If the most accurate count of U.S. citizens would come from federal databases, then the only reason to conduct a census is to count up illegal aliens. States like California want their illegals counted in the census because it gets them more representatives in Congress and more federal money, which Congress must borrow. I wonder what Wyoming residents think of that?

One doesn’t need many facts to suspect that there’s a lot of malapportionment going on. All one needs to know is that we have 435 congressional districts, and then plug in a population estimate. A U.S. population of 350 million would give us districts comprised of 804,597 “persons,” while a population of 300 million would give us districts with 689,665 “persons.” Using the estimate of 11 million illegal aliens, America would seem to have 13.6 to 15.9 congressional districts reserved just for illegal aliens. That would mean we have maybe 15 members of the U.S. House of Representatives whose constituents are not supposed to be in America. If the illegal population is 22 million, as some assert, then it’s perhaps 30 members.

The “sanctuary” policies of Blue States like California should incense the citizens of other states. The Golden State is overrepresented in Congress due to the state’s swelling ranks of illegal aliens. And then California expects the rest of the nation to help pay for public assistance for the illegals the state have given sanctuary to, (see this April 29 article in the Los Angeles Times). With congressional districts currently set for about 711,000 constituents, California’s 53 districts would suggest a state population of around 37,683,000 as based upon the 2010 census. How many of those 37.7M were citizens and how many were illegal aliens? Perhaps Trump’s computer reports can shed light on this mystery.

Parts of the federal government are little more than “jobs programs.” The census falls in that category. Given the huge deficits Congress has been running, it’s scandalous that the feds even do a census. If one believes that the enumeration called for by the Constitution should be of citizens only, then the census is little more than a $15.6 billion scam on the taxpayers of America, especially when we have computers that can do the job for free.

The real question for the citizens of America should be: Are we going to count illegal aliens in reapportionment of congressional districts in the states? After all, unlike American citizens, illegal aliens are all deportable. And if they were all deported, then California would have fewer seats in Congress.

Jon N. Hall of ULTRACON OPINION is a programmer from Kansas City.