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.

Get ready, because we are going to take a hard look at the history behind the census and the fight over representation. After all, the census determines the “we” in “We the People.”

Music by: Andrii Poradovskyi (lNPLUSMUSIC – Pixabay)

SOURCES:

Anderson, Margo J. The American Census: A Social History. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.

Finkelman, Paul. “The Three-Fifths Compromise: Political Calculations and Moral Failings.” Journal of the Early Republic 8, no. 4 (Winter 1988): 373–405.

Madison, James. The Federalist No. 54. In The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter. New York: Signet Classics, 2003.

U.S. Census Bureau. “Native American Population: 1940 and Later.” Historical Publications. https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/nativeamerican.pdf.

U.S. Constitution, art. I, § 2, cl. 3; amend. XIV.

U.S. Supreme Court. Department of Commerce v. New York, 585 U.S. ___ (2019). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/18-966_bq7c.pdf.

U.S. Supreme Court. Evenwel v. Abbott, 578 U.S. 54 (2016). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-940_ed9g.pdf.

U.S. Supreme Court. Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964). https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/377/533/.

U.S. Supreme Court. Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964). https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/376/1/.