The estimated 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S. could help elect Hillary Clinton to the White House in 2016.
That’s according to a new analysis published in Politico Magazine on Saturday by Washington Post columnist Paul Goldman and George Mason University dean Mark Rozell. The pair lay out the case that illegal aliens and other non-citizen residents in the U.S. will help whichever candidate Democrats nominate for the White House.
This won’t be achieved by illegal aliens voting illegally, but by indirectly skewing the Electoral College in favor of Democrats, Goldman and Rozell argue.
The Electoral College provides one elector for each U.S. senator — of which there are 100 — and 435 electors for each member of the House of Representatives. An additional three electors granted to Washington D.C. brings the total “enrollment” in the Electoral College to 538.
The 435 electors granted for each House member are fluid. The electors are distributed among the 50 states according to each state’s population share based upon U.S. Census data. That means that states with a large number of illegal aliens and noncitizen residents end up with an inordinate number of electoral votes, according to Goldman and Rozell. And that helps Blue states, given that they house more residents from those two groups than do states that historically support Republicans.
“This math gives strongly Democratic states an unfair edge in the Electoral College,” Goldman and Rozell write.
They cite analysis from American University scholar Leonard Steinhorn who estimates that California, with its massive illegal alien population, would lose five House seats and, thus, five electors if illegal aliens and other non-citizens were not counted towards its population figures for electoral purposes. California, of course, is strongly Democratic.
New York and Washington, also two Blue states, would lose one House seat and one elector.
Republicans would lose only two electors from consistently conservative Texas, which has a large illegal immigrant population. Florida, a key swing state, would lose one House seat and an elector.
The 10 House seats and electors that would be lost among those states would need to be redistributed to others in the Union. According to Steinhorn’s analysis, Iowa, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania would all pick up an additional House seat and additional elector.
Goldman and Rozell posit that seven of those states are Republican strongholds or Republican-leaning. Three are solidly Democratic, meaning that Democrats pick up a net of four electors because illegal aliens and noncitizens are counted towards the Electoral College.
According to the analysis conducted by Goldman and Rozell, that four vote swing would be enough to help the prospective GOP nominee overcome his or her Democratic foe, who most believe will be Hillary Clinton.
That claim hinges on a the prospective GOP nominee faring better in the key battleground states of Ohio, Florida and Virginia than Mitt Romney in 2012. Goldman and Rozell assert that this is entirely plausible given that Clinton is suffering from a massive favorability gap in those states, among others.
Romney won 206 electors in 2012. With Ohio, Florida and Virginia, he would have had 266 — just four shy of the 270 needed to win the presidency.
Goldman and Rozell see little hope of the electoral system being changed anytime soon, however.
“There seems little chance the states will ratify a constitutional amendment dumping the Electoral College in favor of voters directly electing the President. Amending the 14th Amendment to change the ‘whole persons’ formulation for apportioning House of Representative seats is equally unlikely,” they write.