How did the Trump administration fight to ask questions about citizenship in the census

Resistance of the interior

The request long sought by the Ministry of Justice was finally implemented on December 12. Three pages, calling the question of citizenship "critical", were essential to obtain sufficiently accurate data on non-citizens to apply the law on the right to vote. The citizenship data from the American Community Survey, he said, were not detailed enough.

The Census Bureau's experts say it's wrong, noting that the Voting Rights Act has been enforced since 1965 with data from the community survey or its equivalent. Anyway, the new question sent Census Bureau staff getting confused. Because there are so few questions in the census, which makes specific answers crucial, the office usually tests new questions in the field for years before deciding whether or not to use them.

At present, Ron S. Jarmin, the acting director of the office, had only a few months to complete the assessment by April 1, the deadline for briefing Congress on 2020 issues.

But within the office, resistance to the issue was rising, with the chief scientist of the agency, John M. Abowd, concluding that the question was useless. By combining existing data, he wrote, the office could provide Justice with more accurate citizenship data than a census question – and at a lower cost.

A question about citizenship "is very expensive, undermines the quality of the census and uses much less precise citizenship data than that provided by administrative sources," he wrote. It would also deter at least 630,000 households from completing the form.

Mr. Jarmin, acting director of the office, asked the Department of Justice to inform Mr. Abowd's findings. Court documents, however, show that Mr. Sessions personally rejected this argument, directing NCOs not to consider ways to collect citizenship data beyond the citizenship issue.

The news of demand has, meanwhile, triggered a storm of protests among demographers, former census directors and stakeholders – mall operators, philanthropists, and even AC Nielsen, the marketing research giant – who depends accurate census results. Private experts and academics on the Census Scientific Advisory Board have identified the issue of citizenship as "a serious mistake that would lead to a substantial decline in the response rate."