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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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Again, the process to actually obtain votes is

  1. apply to be made legal (X million)

  2. be made legal (1986: 90% accepted)

  3. apply for and be given citizenship (1986 cohort: about a third by 15 years, up to half over lifetime, probably much less immediately)

  4. register to vote

  5. actually vote (I think I misplaced this in my original, oops, this is combined with 4; overall turnout for eligible adults is 66% but some sources say naturalized citizens might vote more, others claim less. Might have to dig up where I got that original source.)

  6. have more of the new voters vote D than R (if so, how much?) (OP laid out how many, but last major election it was +33% D)

  7. was the net gain, if present, larger than the margin of victory?

You only actually get an effect when you reach the last step. You're acting like you can just skip from 1 to 7 and poof, permanent Democratic hegemony! Some of those steps take years, and many math-wise aren't nearly as strong as you might imply. Going backwards, to assemble, say, 20,000 votes, enough to swing a very close swing state, you'd need (20,000) / (33% current Hispanic net +D margin) / (66% of citizens who vote) / (33% who became an actual citizen) / (90% who applied for legal status) = about 310,000 applicants needed. Of course IRL this would lag as the naturalization process usually takes a bit.

So sure, overall plausible in a swing state. Georgia apparently has about 340,000 per that source, so right there on the line, though 2020 was a real squeaker and not that common. Most swing states don't have millions of immigrants, either, and there are plenty of non-swing states too to talk about. That's important when talking about Senate control -- remember, a permanent Democratic electoral stranglehold like Elon posted about would require at least a 2/3rds margin in the Senate, in all practical likelihood. And again, you need the Senate in the first place to even pass legislation giving this pathway to citizenship.

Even in the unlikely event that Democrats took control of the Senate (quite unlikely this cycle, Montana is toast) and House and Presidency and actually pass a bill to do a change like this...

Senate appointments rotate on a staggered basis only a third at a time rotating two years apart, so at least one cycle if not many more would take place before these new voters even showed up! Boy were the Founders smart. That's long enough for public opinion, if merited, to swing against Democrats for making an allegedly naked partisan power grab, more than offsetting any gained votes, it seems to me in that scenario. And even if you pass all those gauntlets, I'd pose the final question: didn't the process work anyways? As a country we're allowed to set our laws including citizenship, though of course the history of what that means and naturalization in general is actually a matter of some great debate, I will grant you.