February 24, 2009

The Coming Battle of Reapportionment and Redistricting

By Bruce Walker
The decision by Senator Gregg not to become Commerce Secretary is the first round in a vital battle over reapportionment and redistricting.   US Code Title 13, Section 2 provides "The Bureau [of the Census] is an agency within, and under the jurisdiction of, the Department of Commerce."    Article I Section 2 of the Constitution states that Congress, not the President, defines the census process.  If President Obama tries to politically manage the census process, he will violate federal law and the Constitution.  The number of representatives each state gets depends upon the number of people in each state, as counted by the census every ten years.  Because there are a fixed number of House seats to be divided among the states -- 435 House seats -- reapportionment is a zero sum game:  a state can only gain House seats if another state loses House seats.  The Left wants to replace the census count with a census...(Read Full Article)