Without voting, noncitizens could swing the election for Obama

If President Obama wins reelection by three or four Electoral College votes next month, the reason may be simple: noncitizens, mostly immigrants, who don’t have the right to vote. No, I’m not talking about his immigration policy or his popularity with Latinos. Nor does this have anything to do with voter fraud. Rather, an Obama victory could hinge on a quirk in the Constitution that gives noncitizens, a group that includes illegal immigrants and legal permanent residents, a say in electing the president of the United States.

As required by Article I and the Fourteenth Amendment, the decennial census, which allocates to each state its congressional seats and Electoral College votes, is based on a count of all people who live in the United States, citizens and noncitizens alike — or as the Constitution phrases it, “the whole number of persons in each state.” That means millions of noncitizens who are ineligible to vote are included in Electoral College calculations, and that benefits some states over others. Most of these noncitizens are here legally; however, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that about 45 percent of noncitizens are undocumented immigrants.

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A different view of the current electoral college

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In 2010 and most previous years, the census did not inquire about citizenship, but the American Community Survey (ACS), which samples our population every month, includes a breakdown of citizens and noncitizens. Plugging the 2010 ACS citizen-only numbers into the Census Bureau’s apportionment formula shows that five states benefit electorally from their noncitizen populations: New York, Florida and Washington each gain one congressional seat and thus one Electoral College vote; Texas gains two; and California — with 5,516,920 noncitizens out of a total population of 37,341,989 — gains five.

Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Montana each lose a seat under the official formula as compared with an apportionment that counts citizens only.

It is ironic that Florida, which is in the news for its heavy-handed effort to purge noncitizens from its voter rolls, actually has a greater voice in the presidential election because of the nearly 2 million noncitizens who live there.

Looking at how the states might vote in November, there is no scenario in which Mitt Romney benefits from the inclusion of noncitizens in the Electoral College calculation, but there are several in which Obama could gain three to five Electoral College votes, thus deciding a close election.

To play out a few of these scenarios, let’s first assume that each candidate wins states that are competitive but leaning his way. So Michigan and Pennsylvania go to the president, and North Carolina and Arizona go to Romney.

That leaves eight battleground states up for grabs: Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin, Colorado, Nevada, Iowa and New Hampshire.Obama begins with a base of 237 Electoral College votes, and Romney comes in at 206.

If the president won Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa, and Romney took the rest, Obama would prevail by 271 to 267 Electoral College votes. However, if the Electoral College calculation did not include noncitizens, Mitt Romney would win 270 to 268.