Exclusive: Sen. Bill Hagerty Leads ‘Equal Representation Act’ to Count Only Americans for Congressional Apportionment, Electoral College

A broad group of Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), has introduced the Equal Representation Act to require that only American citizens be counted when apportioning congressional districts, and thus, deciding how many Electoral College votes each state receives for presidential elections.

The legislation, Breitbart News has exclusively learned, would ensure that only American citizens are counted in the census for congressional apportionment purposes — amending the current standard that counts all residents, including foreign nationals who cannot vote in United States elections, such as green card-holders, visa-holders, and illegal aliens.

“It is unconscionable that illegal immigrants and non-citizens are counted toward congressional district apportionment and our electoral map for the presidency, which also heavily skews the seat count in the U.S. House of Representatives,” Hagerty told Breitbart News.

“While people continue to flee Democrat-run cities, desperate Democrats have back-filled the mass exodus with illegal immigrants so that they do not lose their seats in Congress or their electoral votes, hence artificially boosting their political power and in turn diluting the power of other Americans’ votes,” Hagerty continued. “I’m pleased to lead my colleagues in reintroducing this legislation that would require a citizenship question on the census and will ensure that only citizens are counted in congressional redistricting.”

Co-sponsoring the bill are Sens. Katie Britt (R-AL), Ted Budd (R-NC), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Steve Daines (R-MT), John Hoeven (R-ND), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Jim Justice (R-WV), James Lankford (R-OK), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Jim Risch (R-ID), Eric Schmitt (R-MO), Rick Scott (R-FL), Tim Sheehy (R-MT), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).

Budd said he is sponsoring the bill to make sure that Democrats no longer take “power away from American citizens who deserve to have their voices and votes equally accounted for.”

“For years, Democrat-run sanctuary cities and states have used millions of illegal aliens to grow their political influence,” Budd said. “… illegal aliens have no place dictating the congressional seats or Electoral College votes a state receives.”

Indeed, research from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) published last year found that counting foreign nationals, including illegal aliens, causes “significant distortions” to congressional apportionment.

“Districts where non-citizens comprise a large share of the population tend to vote Democratic, while high-citizenship districts tend to vote Republican,” CIS researchers wrote:

Of the 24 districts where one in five adults is not an American citizen, only four were won by a Republican in 2022. In contrast, in the 54 districts where less than 2 percent of adults are not citizens, just five are represented by a Democrat. [Emphasis added]

“The law is clear- illegal immigrants are not citizens of the United States and should not be counted as such,” Daines said. “This bill is a commonsense measure to prohibit illegal immigrants from being counted in censuses, so that sanctuary cities can’t exploit the electoral college and taxpayer resources.”

In practice, CIS researchers found, each one percentage point increase in the foreign share of a congressional district’s population is associated with a 1.8 percentage point increase in the Democrat share of the two-party vote for that district.

Center for Immigration Studies

Marshall said the legislation is simple: “Americans should decide American elections.”

“States like California and New York should not be able to inflate their votes in the Electoral College — and in Congress — by counting non-citizens in the Census,” Marshall said. “I’m proud to support this bill to ensure that every vote in the Electoral College and Congress reflects the voices of American citizens only.”

Last year, House Democrats unanimously voted to reject the Equal Representation Act and thus continue counting foreign nationals, including illegal aliens, for congressional apportionment and the Electoral College.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.