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While the Supreme Court was about to rule in a few weeks on whether a citizenship issue could be included in the 2020 census, new documents uncovered suggest that the reason the Trump administration sought to add was to provide a political advantage to "Republicans and non-Hispanic Whites. "
Discovered on a hard drive by Thomas Hofeller, a Republican expert on cutting, after the death of his ex-girl after his death last August, the documents seem to show the deep political roots of the question of citizenship. They include a 2015 study concluding that a single census of citizens would be a better way to create Republican-friendly constituencies. "Without a question on citizenship in the 2020 decennial census questionnaire," Hofeller wrote in excerpts released Thursday by the New York Times, "the use of the population of citizens of voting age is functionally impracticable ".
Since December 2017, when Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross formally asked the Census Bureau to add the citizenship issue, opponents argued that its inclusion would deter immigrants and members of minority groups from participating, which would result in a decrease in the number of inhabitants – and a reduction in the number of inhabitants. in the political power – in the areas most likely to vote Democrat. Ross's statement that the issue was necessary to better enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act was merely a pretext, said the opponents, the real goal being political.
The hard drive also contained a rough draft of a letter from Hofeller that justified the issue to enforce the law on voting rights. Part of the language of this letter appeared later in Ross's requests to include the controversial issue.
Stephanie Hofeller gave the hard drive to the plaintiffs' lawyers in another gerrymandering case, Common Cause v. Lewis, about controversial electoral maps in North Carolina. These lawyers also represented opponents of the citizenship issue in the Department of Commerce v. State of New York, which is currently before the Supreme Court.
"The evidence reveals that the project to add the citizenship question was developed by the Republican leader who redistributed the brain to create an electoral advantage," said Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn, in a statement. "This contradicts the testimony of government officials stating that they wanted to add the issue to Latino voters, while the opposite was true."
The census is conducted every 10 years in the United States, as provided by the Constitution, which requires an "effective census", in order to allocate seats in the House of Representatives according to the "total number of persons in each state".
The question of citizenship has not been asked of respondents since 1950 and was only asked to the subgroup to which the "long" version of the questionnaire was randomly assigned. If the High Court allowed it, it would be the first time in history that all people living in the United States would be asked if they were citizens.
Experts estimate that 6.5 million people would not be counted in the 2020 census if the issue was included and that several states, including Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas would lose seats. Congress and federal funding of population-based programs. A lawsuit in New York to block the issue was heard by the Supreme Court in April. At that time, Trump administration lawyers argued that the value of citizenship information in the enforcement of the voting rights law compensated for any potential harm caused by rates of death. 39, depressed activity among immigrants and minority groups. The government also directly refuted arguments that the link to voting rights was a manufactured rationalization.
The Court's observers believe that the new conservative majority of the Court seemed willing to accept the administration's argument that the question was necessary and not political. A lawsuit filed Thursday in the Southern District Court of New York, which ruled in favor of those who would block the inclusion of the issue, asks Judge Jesse M. Furman to "sanction or provide a other appropriate remedy "in light of the new documents, even as the Supreme Court considers the appeal of its decision.
The Supreme Court ends its session at the end of June. The timing is important because the final census forms must be printed the same month.
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