From: A Talk Radio Listener [Email him]
There has been no mention anywhere of the main reason Republicans win a higher percentage of votes for Congress than House seats [GOP Won the Votes, but Not the Seats, by Charlie Cook, Cook Report, November 17, 2022]. It’s the rotten boroughs—districts with high populations of illegal aliens that are counted by the census and counted the same as citizens in redistricting. If districts were created based on the population of American citizens, Republicans would have perhaps 5 to 10 more members in the U.S. House and substantially more members of state legislatures, especially in N.Y. and N.J.
Apparently Republicans would rather let this continue than fight for a Constitutional Amendment to create districts based on the population of American citizens.
See earlier letters from the same reader.
James Fulford writes: We use the expression ”rotten boroughs,” from a 19th century English parallel case—and this was one of the earliest things I wrote for VDARE.com: Immigration’s Rotten Borough dynamic…, February 23, 2001.
This included a
Helpful VDARE note: ”Rotten Boroughs” were districts returning members to the British House of Commons, prior to the democratic Great Reform Act of 1832, despite having few or even no inhabitants. As a practical matter, they were in the gift of local magnates. Well, guess what…
You can see a lot more under our tag category Rotten Boroughs—Non-Citizens And Apportionment.
I'd like to add that this isn't only about illegals—persons legally present in the U.S. in large numbers also dilute American votes when counted for apportionment. And it may not require a Constitutional Amendment. Steve Sailer wrote in a 2004 American Conservative piece that
The fatalistic attitude of Republicans toward rotten boroughs is constitutionally unwarranted. The highest federal court that has ruled on their validity, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, outlawed them in the upper Midwest in 1998. The distinguished jurist Richard J. Posner opined, “The dignity and very concept of citizenship are diluted if non-citizens are allowed to vote either directly or by the conferral of additional voting power on citizens believed to have a community of interest with the non-citizens.”
