- Opinions do matter but I also provided you with an empirical example of chaos - the Italian parliament, which has 630 representatives with a significantly lower population. Quantity isn't quality.
There are fights in other elected bodies around the world (including the US) and the ratio of the population to representatives elected is irrelevant. Likewise, the number of members in an elected body is irrelevant, whether it's Nepal (59 members) or Italy (630 members). The argument is not empirical, it's simply a poor argument.
I believe we have nearly 20 million people living in the United States illegally. Since only citizens can vote in an election in our representative democracy, I'm not sure just counting raw populations really represents our citizens equitably. While I might be open to allow a count for Green cardholders not everyone who gets a green card becomes a US citizen.
That's not what the Constitution says; you must count all people, not voters, but people. Regardless of anyone's status, be they free, imprisoned, convicted or undocumented, they are to be counted as they are part of the states where they reside. Do we adjust the population every year based on eligibility (i.e., whether someone loses immigration status or another person commits a felony)? Do you want a system where people can live here and have no representation? The American Revolution was spurred in part because of the idea of taxation without representation, yet you are demanding population numbers be counted in a way to remove representation for residents. Even if the false arguments of undocumented workers are unfairly increasing numbers, a state with 10 million residents is still a state of 10 million residents, regardless of the residents' status, it should be treated as such, including the allocation of resources, number of representatives, etc.
There is also the issue of legal status being something that can be changed on a whim. In the early 20th century people could just come to the United States and be counted, attitudes about their status was irrelevant to how they're counted. Ideas about legal status are also about policy, which should not affect the census. You talk about voting citizens, which means I could just as easily argue and push for a law that says one must be of voting age to count, but that's not what the Constitution says, thus my rule and your rule are unconstitutional and un-American.
The argument also ignores the original intent, it was never to count the voting population (i.e., white males that owned land), it was meant to count the population.
