What removing immigrants from census would mean for House seats [Video]

House seats and electoral votes are based on population data that includes noncitizens. Omitting unauthorized immigrants wouldn’t significantly change seats or votes

Every ten years, the United States conducts a census to count the population.

The results of that census determine how many representatives each state gets in Congress, and the combined number of representatives and senators determines how many electoral votes each state gets in the presidential race.

Since the census counts both citizens and noncitizens, some of our readers wanted to know whether people in the country illegally might be indirectly affecting elections.

VERIFY reader Lennard said he heard that if the census didn’t count unauthorized immigrants, Democrats would lose 20 seats in the House of Representatives, and therefore 20 electoral votes.