The inclusion of aliens, whether legal or illegal, in the population used to draw new boundary lines for congressional, state legislative, and local city council and other offices dilutes the votes of U.S. citizens and distorts their representation and political power within legislative bodies. Because the U.S. decennial census is not currently obtaining citizenship data on the population of the country, states should conduct their own censuses to determine the number of their residents who are citizens and the number of residents who are aliens. Each state should then consider only its citizen population when deciding on its legislative redistricting plans.