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"Who Counts? How the Trump
administration’s scheme to rig the census threatens American
democracy
(By Eric H. Holder Jr. | February 20, 2018)
In his first year in
office, Donald Trump and his administration have launched a daunting
number of direct and open attacks on long-respected American rights
and freedoms—
threatening immigrants, the media, health
care, transgender rights in the military, and much else.
But there have been other, indirect and behind-the-scenes attacks,
too, which may be no less damaging to the United States in the long
term.
Perhaps the most critical
of these is aimed at the census.
Under Article I, Section 2 of the
Constitution, “the whole number of persons in each State” must be
counted “every … ten years.”
Based on these decennial census
results, the government decides, among other things, what to spend on
schools, where to direct funding for health care and infrastructure,
and how to allocate our representatives in Congress and in state
legislatures.
But under the Trump administration, the census, which
has serious implications for the rights and daily lives of all
Americans, seems likely to prove to be both unfair and
inaccurate, and its consequences will remain in place for at least
the next ten years—until the next census.
The history of the census
is controversial. As originally drafted, the constitutional provision
calling for the decennial census followed the three-fifths
clause, which stated that the count of citizens would include, in
addition to “free Persons,” “three-fifths of all other
Persons.”
In other words, the census, as initially embedded in our
founding document, was based on the dehumanization of enslaved
people.
Moreover, census results have in certain instances been
improperly used.
Most notoriously, during World War II the War
Department used existing census records to compile a
database of citizens and foreign nationals thought to be dangerous.
This enabled the internment of Japanese-Americans after the attack on
Pearl Harbor.
In the latter half of the
twentieth century, the United States took significant steps to
address these problems...In 1980, for example, FBI agents went to a Census Bureau
office in Colorado Springs with warrants authorizing them to seize
documents there. They were turned away by a census employee, and the
dispute escalated to include both the Census Bureau director and the
director of the FBI. It ended with an agreement that only sworn
census employees would review census documents, but that they would
provide a report for the FBI—excluding all confidential
information.
... The census has also
undergone changes in its design to achieve more accurate counts.
... For the 2010 census, a
single questionnaire was used that had been modified to address
concerns about undercounting. The Census Bureau took a number of
innovative steps, including enlisting organizations to
explain the importance of participating in the count, and buying
additional advertising in locations where responses lagged...the response rate
rose to about 74 percent, up from 67 percent in 2000 and 65 percent
in 1990.
In just over a year in
office, the Trump administration has threatened to undo the progress
of two decades.
Last fall, the White House expressed an
interest in appointing Thomas Brunell for the Bureau’s vacant
deputy directorship, a historically apolitical position that does not
require Senate confirmation.
Brunell, however, is far from
apolitical.
A University of Texas professor who has written a book
titled Redistricting and Representation:
Why Competitive
Elections Are Bad for America,
(Emphasis is mine.)
he has been an expert witness for
Republicans in over a dozen gerrymandering cases in almost as many
states—including Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, and
Texas—in both the 2000 and 2010 cycle of redistricting litigation,
and has also criticized the scientifically backed policy of
statistically adjusting census results to account for undercounted
populations.
Although he is no longer under consideration for the
position, this shows the mindset of the current administration.
To
make matters worse, Congress has repeatedly refused to
appropriate the necessary funds to ensure an accurate count in 2020,
despite the Government Accountability Office having put the census on
its list of “high-risk” programs threatened by “waste,
fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.”
The administration’s
most worrisome move, however, is its attempt to include a
citizenship question on the census.
U.S. households have not been
asked about citizenship on the main census questionnaire since 1950,
when it included the query: “If foreign born, is the person
naturalized?” And that’s not surprising given the original intent
of the census.
As Timothy Pickering wrote in a December 26,
1793, letter to Thomas Jefferson, the census was meant to
be a “Census of Inhabitants,” not a census of citizens.
(Emphasis is mine.)
Today, the inclusion of a
citizenship question on the 2020 census questionnaire will both lower
the response rate of households and threaten the accuracy of the
count.
According to a September 2017 census memo, researchers
conducting field tests last year noticed a “new phenomenon” of
increased fear among immigrant participants.
Many of them referenced
concerns about the “Muslim ban” and Immigration and Customs
Enforcement activities, which caused people to report inaccurate
information or refuse to participate at all.
The addition of a
citizenship question would exacerbate this climate of fear among
minority and immigrant populations and drive critical participation
levels even lower.
Disturbingly, the reasons
advanced by the Department of Justice for the citizenship question
seem to be a veiled attempt to mask ulterior motives.
Undercounting
minority populations would shift electoral power and federal
resources from urban population centers to rural areas that are more
generally populated by Trump’s supporters.
But the Trump
administration has presented its request for a citizenship
question as a good faith effort to enforce the Voting Rights Act.
Citizenship data, Trump’s Justice Department wrote in
December, is “critical” to enforce the VRA and to protect
“against racial discrimination in voting."
(Emphasis, in the form of underlining here is mine.)
But as attorney
general, I did not—nor did my predecessors—request the addition
of a citizenship question to the decennial census to enforce the VRA
and did not need to:
Data derived from the existing census process
was perfectly adequate for any voting litigation that arose.
Most
telling to me is that the request for the citizenship question came
not from the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division (the
component within DOJ responsible for enforcing voting rights law)
but
from the Justice Management Division, an administrative branch of the
DOJ with little authority and expertise in voting rights.
This
irregularity reflects the Trump administration’s pattern
of sidestepping DOJ norms and excluding knowledgeable
stakeholders from crucial conversations. Once again, Donald Trump and
his attorney general are rooting decisions in ideology, instead of
expertise.
(Emphasis is mine.)
An inaccurate census would
have devastating consequences on the right to vote and to participate
meaningfully in democracy.
The apportionment of representatives to
Congress depends on census data. States and municipalities rely on
the census count not only to draw their congressional and state
legislative districts but even to demarcate school districts.
An
inaccurate census affects which district you belong to, who
represents you, and whether your vote will count.
The federal government
also uses census data to distribute billions in federal money to the
states.
According to a study at The George Washington
University, in 2015, the 50 states and the District of Columbia
received $589.7 billion from 16 census-guided programs, including
Medicaid, Highway Planning and Construction, and the National School
Lunch Program. All but one of these programs serve populations deemed
at risk, including low-income households, senior citizens, and
children with special needs.
Undercounting of the sort that would
result from the Trump administration’s plans would lead to states
and communities losing out on deserved and urgently needed
funds to serve their most vulnerable populations.
There’s no hyperbole in
saying that participation in the decennial census is one of our most
important civic duties.
Elections and resource allocations were meant
to be decided by fair maps and accurate counts.
But fair maps and
appropriate funding both require a fair census. The attacks on the
census process go beyond politics—
(Emphasis is mine.)
they represent a major assault on
representative American democracy.
(Emphasis is mine.)
(Eric Holder is the 82nd
attorney general of the United States and the chairman of the National
Democratic Redistricting Committee.)
Because Holder is not a frivolous writer I did not edit much of out his piece for more efficient reading but you can read the original article here
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