The House of Representatives finally acted Wednesday to remedy an injustice that has been getting worse as the number of illegal aliens coming into the United States has skyrocketed: the distortion caused by including noncitizens when determining how many House members each state gets.
The House passed HR 7109, the Equal Representation Act, to mandate a citizenship question on the census form and use of only the citizen population in the apportionment formula for representation applied after every census.
Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution mandates an “actual Enumeration” of the U.S. population every 10 years. That enumeration is used to determine the number of members in the House to which each state is entitled.
Because Congress limited the size of the House to 435 members in 1929 by passing the Permanent Apportionment Act, those 435 representatives…
