The Fight Over the Census: Can the President Decide Who Gets Counted and Who Gets Left Out?

In the United States, political power has always been counted—literally. From the moment the framers dipped their quills into ink and drafted Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, they established a system in which representation would not be apportioned by guesswork or political bargaining alone, but by an “actual enumeration” every ten years.

Behind the clean arithmetic of apportionment lurks an untidy truth: deciding who counts means deciding whose political voice matters. From the original Constitution’s compromise that treated enslaved people as “three-fifths” of a person, to the exclusion of Native Americans “not taxed,” to modern battles over the counting of undocumented immigrants, the census has never been a neutral act of head counting. It has been, and remains, a contest over power, representation, and belonging.

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