2020 Census to include citizenship question

[highplainsdem]

Source: The Hill

President Trump's Commerce Department said Monday evening that the 2020 Census will include a question on citizenship over the strenuous objections of Democrats.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced his decision to reinstate the citizenship question in a post on the Commerce website. The citizenship question has not appeared on the census since 1950, but Ross argued that collecting citizenship data has been “a long-standing historical practice."

-snip-

Census data is used to redraw House districts and the number of House seats each state receives also plays a part in determining each state’s number of electoral votes in a presidential election.

Democrats have raised concerns that adding the question would result in an inaccurate population count because it would discourage some immigrants from filling out the questionnaire given the Trump administration's crackdown on those in the country illegally.

-snip-

Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/380387-2020-census-to-include-citizenship-question

[Thekaspervote]

1. In another post here 19 state attorneys general have said they will sue over citizenship question

[Gothmog]

4. Another lawsuit for trump to lose

[Honeycombe8]

8. I'm not sure of that. The Census used to ask that question.

I don't know why it was dropped.

[highplainsdem]

2. NYT Metro correspondent: This could shift representation away from big cities

Link to tweet

This could have massive political consequences between 2020 and 2030: Fewer people canvassed in big cities, for instance, would shift representation elsewhere in congressional districts and state legislative seats

[procon]

3. Republicans cannot stop cheating, its hardwired into their DNA.

If they are trying to turn the US census into an ethnic purity test and tilt the data in favor of the typical white Republican voter, this is the way to do it. If they can scare off enough people who weren't born here to alter the census demographics, then they'll cling to power for another 10 years.

[Igel]

5. It would run the risk of people avoiding answering the questionnaire.

Or perhaps they would just lie. The census takers and the piece of paper they write on don't exactly check ID and run fingerprint checks against the e-Verify database.

However, if answered honestly it would remove the cottage industry of predicting how many immigrants entered or remained in the US without authorization. I imagine scores of people would suffer significant financial hardship over this. Perhaps the number's far higher than expected, so we'd be facing 20 million illegal aliens and we'd have to figure out how, exactly, mostly low-paid workers without access to Social Security were going to manage when they turned 63. Or we'd find that really there are only 4 million, not the 11 million we've come to believe in, and so they have far less clout and far fewer political implications.

As it is, given the propensity of people to lie when there's the slightest benefit in lying, the numbers will be more accurate than before but how accurate will be a guess. They'll provide a minimum number, but even that might be illuminating. Or not.

[Odoreida]

17. Anybody with any sense already avoids it. n/t

[meadowlander]

25. How so?

Funding for government services is based on the census. So avoiding it means your local schools, libraries, public health services and other infrastructure get less funding that they otherwise would. The whole point of asking the citizenship questions is to have an excuse to defund schools and other public services in areas with high immigrant populations. And what possible problems could that cause down the road...

A lot of local, state and national government analytics are based on demographic information and trends turned up by the census. So not answering it makes it more difficult for them to plan for population changes in your area (for example by rezoning enough land for housing so that it stays affordable, or by creating more public housing, building enough wastewater and water supply infrastructure, or building enough swimming pools or police and firestations or by rezoning land for business to promote economic growth).

It also makes it easier to redraw your district to give less weight to your vote.

Doesn't seem very sensible to me to not fill it out given that the census takes 5 minutes to complete and then informs decision making in your area for the next ten years but I guess YMMV.

[Odoreida]

33. Your faith is touching n/t

[meadowlander]

34. Your cynicism is cheap, poorly informed and counterproductive.

[CreekDog]

22. Asking citizenship doesn't indicate whether someone is in the country illegally

You must not have thought about what you wrote to think that.

If you ask if someone is a citizen or not, it only tells you if they're a citizen.

Being in the USA without citizenship doesn't tell you whether or not someone came across the border illegally.

In fact, even being a citizen doesn't tell you if that person came across the border illegally.

I dunno, it just bugs me when people go on and on clearly not having throught about the topic they're writing about.

[getagrip_already]

23. it depends on wording...

but is there a requirement to answer ALL questions or can you leave some blank?

Maybe we should organize a boycott of that question, even for citizens........

[FBaggins]

31. Its technically illegal

Though the penalty is larger for false answers than skipped questions... and few are ever prosecuted.

[yonder]

6. I'm guessing:

KOBACH!

Is he still pulling levers somewhere?

[TreasonousBastard]

7. The Census Bureau does other surveys unrelated to the decennial count, and many of them...

do ask about citizenship. At least one specifically asks for place of birth and parents' place of birth. They are not as all-encompassing as the decennial, but they do give a decent statistical sample that can be expanded to the overall population.

However, at least in this area, thanks to wingnuttery, overall cooperation with these surveys has declined as "government intrusion" and the large Hispanic population has been increasingly avoiding them out of fear.

Whether or not this is ultimately significant, or a random effect, I don't know.

[FakeNoose]

9. Why don't they ask people if they're gun owners?

That's more relevant than citizenship.

Just sayin'

[benld74]

10. All should mark NO next to it

Really eff-up their data

[Ilsa]

30. Why don't we all just skip the question?

Is that possible? What if half of the population simply skips it?

[benld74]

36. Even better

[LeftInTX]

11. Maybe Texas will lose electoral votes...

[mentalslavery]

12. This will backfire....fucking up census data will not help R's

Lots of red states will have less population...as pointed out above texas...which is a big time play in R politics....and florida...which is key to any national campaign.

high population White liberal states will benefit from the redistribution...think PWN and NE regions...

Sometimes they're stupidity is wonderful.

To boot, they will have a lot of motivated latino's that they do not know about, cuz they scared them away from the count....but not the polls

[TeamPooka]

13. GOP taking us back to 1950, literally. Next stop, 1850.

[riversedge]

14. Xavier Becerra, CA Attorney Gen. says it is Illegal and is filing suit. But

article also says the deadline for census is this Saturday ---which is why, IMHO the DOJ waited so long to announce this.






Xavier Becerra
‏Verified account @AGBecerra

#BREAKING: Filing suit against @realdonaldtrump's Administration over decision to add #citizenship question on #2020Census. Including the question is not just a bad idea — it is illegal:

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Citizenship-question-on-2020-census-may-result-in-12783055.php

..............Including a citizenship question on the 2020 census is not just a bad idea — it is illegal.

The Constitution requires the government to conduct an “actual enumeration” of the total population, regardless of citizenship status. And since 1790, the census has counted citizens and noncitizens alike.

The census has a specific constitutional purpose: to provide an accurate count of all residents, which then allows for proper allotment of congressional representatives to the states. The Census Bureau has a long history of working to ensure the most accurate count of the U.S. population in a nonpartisan manner, based on scientific principles.

Since the last census in 2010, the public servants at the Census Bureau have been planning and fine-tuning the 2020 census. This work includes painstaking determinations of which questions to ask on the census and how to ask them.......................

[BumRushDaShow]

18. Thank you for posting that tweet with the case, that just got decided in 2016

Evenwel v. Abbott (PDF)

Basically this was an 8-0 decision (where the reference to a "6-2" was because 2 of them disagreed with a couple parts but not the entirety of the decision). Justice Ruth Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion. Have been reading the ruling and this seems to be the gist -

<...>

In agreement with Texas and the United States, we reject appellants’ attempt to locate a voter-equality mandate in the Equal Protection Clause. As history, precedent, and practice demonstrate, it is plainly permissible for jurisdictions to measure equalization by the total population of state and local legislative districts.

<...>

We begin with constitutional history. At the time of the founding, the Framers confronted a question analogous to the one at issue here: On what basis should congressional districts be allocated to States? The Framers’ solution, now known as the Great Compromise, was to provide each State the same number of seats in the Senate, and to allocate House seats based on States’ total populations. “Representatives and direct Taxes,” they wrote, “shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers.” U. S. Const., Art. I, §2, cl. 3 (emphasis added). “It is a fundamental principle of the proposed constitution,” James Madison explained in the Federalist Papers, “that as the aggregate number of representatives allotted to the several states, is to be . . . founded on the aggregate number of inhabitants; so, the right of choosing this allotted number in each state, is to be exercised by such part of the inhabitants, as the state itself may designate.” The Federalist No. 54, p. 284 (G. Carey & J. McClellan eds.2001). In other words, the basis of representation in the House was to include all inhabitants—although slaves were counted as only three-fifths of a person—even though States remained free to deny many of those inhabitants the right to participate in the selection of their representatives.8 Endorsing apportionment based on total population, Alexander Hamilton declared: “There can be no truer principle than this—that every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the protection of government.”1 Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, p.473 (M. Farrand ed. 1911).9

<...>

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-940_ed9g.pdf

[melm00se]

15. I am not sure that a suit led by California

will force this change.

Why?

https://www.census.gov/2010census/about/constitutional.php

As long as the specific questions are enumerated 2 years before the actual census, the questions appear to be legal.

Questions beyond a simple count are Constitutional

It is constitutional to include questions in the decennial census beyond those concerning a simple count of the number of people. On numerous occasions, the courts have said the Constitution gives Congress the authority to collect statistics in the census. As early as 1870, the Supreme Court characterized as unquestionable the power of Congress to require both an enumeration and the collection of statistics in the census. The Legal Tender Cases, Tex.1870; 12 Wall., U.S., 457, 536, 20 L.Ed. 287. In 1901, a District Court said the Constitution's census clause (Art. 1, Sec. 2, Clause 3) is not limited to a headcount of the population and "does not prohibit the gathering of other statistics, if 'necessary and proper,' for the intelligent exercise of other powers enumerated in the constitution, and in such case there could be no objection to acquiring this information through the same machinery by which the population is enumerated." United States v. Moriarity, 106 F. 886, 891 (S.D.N.Y.1901).

The census does not violate the Fourth Amendment. Morales v. Daley, 116 F. Supp. 2d 801, 820 (S.D. Tex. 2000). In concluding that there was no basis for holding Census 2000 unconstitutional, the District Court in Morales ruled that the 2000 Census and the 2000 Census questions did not violate the Fourth Amendment or other constitutional provisions as alleged by plaintiffs. (The Morales court said responses to census questions are not a violation of a citizen's right to privacy or speech.) "…t is clear that the degree to which these questions intrude upon an individual's privacy is limited, given the methods used to collect the census data and the statutory assurance that the answers and attribution to an individual will remain confidential. The degree to which the information is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests has been found to be significant. A census of the type of Census 2000 has been taken every ten years since the first census in 1790. Such a census has been thought to be necessary for over two hundred years. There is no basis for holding that it is not necessary in the year 2000."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the District Court decision on October 10, 2001, 275 F.3d 45. The U.S. Supreme Court denied petition for writ of certiorari on February 19, 2002, 534 U.S. 1135. No published opinions were filed with these rulings.

These decisions are consistent with the Supreme Court's recent description of the census as the "linchpin of the federal statistical system … collecting data on the characteristics of individuals, households, and housing units throughout the country." Dept. of Commerce v. U.S. House of Representatives, 525 U.S. 316, 341 (1999)

[BumRushDaShow]

19. See post #18

A case just decided in 2016 ruled that the Constitution meant to apportion based on TOTAL population, not just "eligible voter population". And that apportionment comes from the census. And if there is a valid fear that if anyone who did not check a box acknowledging being a citizen (whether they were or not), then they would not be counted, then that would violate the Constitution by not counting ALL of a population in a state.

The plaintiff was arguing their vote was being "diluted" in Texas, apparently due to non-citizens.

The irony here is that the southern, slave-holding states insisted on this type of count - i.e., of the TOTAL population (resulting in the "3/5th compromise" for MY ancestors) so that those states could increase their congressional representation, even including people they did not consider "human" due to those "additional" people counting towards their total population... And this was because as Euro-descended whites only, and as rural states, they would forever be shut out by the more urbanized and populated north.

They can keep laughing and pointing 1 finger at California while their other 3 fingers point back to their beloved Texas, Florida, and Arizona.

[FBaggins]

28. What's the connection to this case?

They aren't saying that (after asking the citizenship question) they will only "count" citizens for apportionment purposes.

[BumRushDaShow]

35. The issue is that the 2016 ruling defined the scope and purpose of the census

and how it is to count "all citizens". I.e., you can't cherry-pick U.S. residents, whether they are citizens or not. You may have millions here on green cards and/or are awaiting citizenship but they are still legal residents and living in the U.S. and need to be counted.

So you have an Executive Branch agency (Commerce Department/Census Bureau) signaling that they want to alter that original purpose and scope of the census by citing the "Voting Rights Act" for a reason to add a question about citizenship on all census forms (vs how it is currently asked on the "American Community Survey" ) in order to not only potentially limit the count of "all citizens", but to also suggest that only those eligible to vote would be counted.

I.e., per this cited about their memo (from the OP link) -

The Department of Justice under Attorney General Jeff Sessions has reportedly pushed for inclusion of the question, arguing that it would allow the department to better enforce the Voting Rights Act.

"For the approximately 90 percent of the population who are citizens, this question is no additional imposition," Ross wrote in his memo. "And for the approximately 70 percent of non-citizens who already answer this question accurately on the [American Community Survey], the question is no additional imposition."

So what they are suggesting they want to do may be considered unconstitutional. And this is despite the fact that the question had been on the form in the past up until the 1950 census. That fact would be irrelevant given that 2016 ruling.

In the 2016 case, you have this (complaint that use of the census counting "everyone" had an effect that "diluted the vote" of citizens) -

<...>

Appellants, who live in Texas Senate districts with particularly large eligible- and registered-voter populations, filed suit against the Texas Governor and Secretary of State. Basing apportionment on total population, appellants contended, dilutes their votes in relation to voters in other Senate districts, in violation of the one-person, one-vote principle of the Equal Protection Clause.

<...>

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-940_ed9g.pdf

So by throwing this notice out there, the agency is eventually going to end up re-litigating the 2016 case by making a similar argument as the plaintiff that lost the 2016 case.

[FBaggins]

38. Sorry... that's not true at all.

The ruling had nothing to do with the appropriate scope of Census data. It merely said that when redistricting lines were being drawn, they had to be drawn based on population... not on some subset of the population. It didn't limit in any what what data the Census could gather.

If that interpretation were true, there are plenty of questions on the Census that would fail to pass muster (e.g., gender, age and race).

Where the ruling would become relevant would be if they tried to apportion House seats (and therefore electoral college votes) to the states based not on the total count, but on just the subset of those who identified themselves as citizens. That would be clearly unconstitutional... but isn't even proposed by the current action.

[BumRushDaShow]

41. "but isn't even proposed by the current action."

Here is his memo - https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4424701-Wilbur-Ross-memo-2018-03-26-2.html

The problem here is this -

DOJ seeks to obtain CVAP data for census blocks, block groups, counties, towns, and other locations where potential Section 2 violations are alleged or suspected, and DOJ states that the current data collected under the ACS are insufficient in scope, detail, and certainty to meet its purpose under the VRA. The Census Bureau has advised me that the census-block-level citizenship data requested by DOJ are not available using the annual ACS, which as noted earlier does ask a citizenship question and is the present method used to provide DOJ and the courts with data used to enforce Section 2 of the VRA. The ACS is sent on an annual basis to a sample of approximately 2.6 percent of the population.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4424701/Wilbur-Ross-memo-2018-03-26-2.pdf (memo as PDF)

Tell me, what does "citizenship" have to do with enforcing the Voting Rights Act (Sect. 2), where the VRA already assumes "voters" should already be "citizens" ?

Here is Sect. 2 -

SEC. 2. No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/voting_rights_1965.asp

The 2016 case had the argument that "non-citizens" were "diluting" the votes of "citizens" and was attempting to tie it to the 14th Amendment (Equal Protection Clause). Since that failed, it seems they are going to go with another tact - the VRA.

Doing this only makes it ripe for abuse, where your assumption is apparently that they would not abuse it. There was a case that had upheld the inclusion of other data in the census surveys (was trying to find it) but the post-2000 Census (creating the ACS) came about as a result of a 2000 SCOTUS case - https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/26/us/jarring-democrats-court-rules-census-must-be-by-actual-count.html

Just like what happened with Drumpf's "Muslin Ban", there is the similar issue of claiming things are being done for one (convoluted) reason but has the effect of something entirely different that will will comport with what has been spouted on a campaign trail.

I.e., it's literally like mimicking the Jim Crow laws (as intimidation), which eventually brought about the VRA & Public Accommodations Act, etc as an example-

[FBaggins]

42. You're reading into that content that isn't there

I'm not saying that they don't have some intended use for the data. I don't know enough about VRA enforcement to know whether or not AVS data is sufficient (though it's reasonable to say that getting everyone to answer the question is obviously better data than trying to extrapolate it from a couple million responses per year)... but none of that is relevant to the discussion on Evenwel v. Abbott.

As I pointed out, Evenwel v. Abbott would only become relevant if someone then used that data for apportionment (rather than just the raw count). To flesh out my prior example... it would be unconstitutional to draw the lines based on age/gender too... but that doesn't mean that the case prohibits the Census from gathering the data... it just has to be used for other purposes.

The 2016 case had the argument that "non-citizens" were "diluting" the votes of "citizens" and was attempting to tie it to the 14th Amendment (Equal Protection Clause). Since that failed, it seems they are going to go with another tact - the VRA.

Again... that's a misunderstanding. It presumes that the case was about what data the Census could collect, rather than what data could be used for redistricting. The court said "you can't draw the lines that way"... they never said "the Census can't collect that data".

The latest case that you cite actually works against you too - with regards to their VRA claims. It rejected a plan to use statistical sampling rather than an actual count. Citizenship data currently comes from statistical extrapolation of much smaller surveys. So, to the extent that citizenship plays a role in VRA enforcement (not sure that it does)... an argument can be made that the earlier ruling supports better data-collection.

[BumRushDaShow]

43. Was not arguing about what they could "collect"

Last edited Wed Mar 28, 2018, 02:12 PM - Edit history (1)

because that was already decided (the case I noted I was looking for).

The issue was specific data that might be used to affect apportionment, based on their unspoken reasoning for asking for "citizenship" data for a subject where "citizenship" is not the specific intent of the law being cited (VRA).

The latest citation regarding the 2000 case, was just to note a timeframe where AFTER that case was decided, the decision was made in the 2010 census to drop what they called "the long form" that was sent out with the "short form", and go with the ACS. And the ACS (which asks about citizenship) is released at a different time from the decennial census (and over multiple years).

On a related note, here is notice of California's case that was filed yesterday -

Link to tweet

TEXT

Xavier Becerra
✔
@AGBecerra

Here's the lawsuit we filed last night against @realdonaldtrump's #census2020 decision. #California simply has too much to lose for us to allow his Administration to botch this obligation! #citizenship
9:22 AM - Mar 27, 2018

Am trying to find a full copy of the above suit.

Several legal folks on various shows last night were citing the 2016 case I mentioned as part of the argument.

Edit to add - found a copy of the California lawsuit -https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press_releases/Complaint_10.pdf
(and found it looking to see if my state - PA - would be doing similar and we will be!)

[Rene]

16. another reason to add to the list, for Demovrats to take House/Senate in 2018

get rid of odious people heading these agencies with their own agendas.....remove Ross and fix forms.

[elmac]

20. the fascist pigs can take that census

and shove it up their pig holes

[Snake Plissken]

21. This will be ruled unconstitutional and Republicans know that, but that's not why they did this

They did this to strictly to make Democrats react so Republicans can target swing voters with ads claiming Democrats are more concerned about non citizens than citizens aka voters. Democrats should completely ignore this in the media and allow it to be handled in the courts, where it will be easily be tossed out.

[highmindedhavi]

24. Is this different than the 2000 version?

the repug sites are claiming it was done by Clinton

[ggccvvtt]

32. Question 13

https://www.census.gov/dmd/www/pdf/d02p.pdf

[BumRushDaShow]

37. That was what is now dubbed the "ACS" (long form) vs the short form that most people got/get

"Long Form" -

Long form

The decennial census questionnaire, sent to approximately one in six households for the 1980, 1990, and 2000 censuses, contains all of the questions on the short form, as well as additional detailed questions relating to the social, economic, and housing characteristics of each individual and household. Information derived from the long form is referred to as sample data, and is tabulated for geographic entities as small as the block group level in 1980, 1990, and 2000 census data.

https://factfinder.census.gov/help/en/long_form.htm

American Community Survey

The nationwide American Community Survey (ACS) is a critical element of the Census Bureau's reengineered decennial census program. During previous decennial censuses, most households received a short-form questionnaire, while one household in six received a long form that contained additional questions and provided more detailed socioeconomic information about the population.

The 2010 Census will be a short-form only census and will count all residents living in the United States as well as ask for name, sex, age, date of birth, race, ethnicity, relationship and housing tenure - taking just minutes to complete.

The more detailed socioeconomic information once collected via the long-form questionnaire is now collected by the American Community Survey. The survey provides current data about all communities every year, rather than once every 10 years. It is sent to a small percentage of the population on a rotating basis throughout the decade. No household will receive the survey more often than once every five years.

In 2008, the Census Bureau released its first multiyear estimates based on ACS data collected from 2005 through 2007. These 3-year estimates of demographic, social, economic and housing characteristics will be available for geographic areas with a population of 20,000 or more, including the nation, all states and the District of Columbia, all congressional districts, approximately 1,800 counties, and 900 metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas, among others. For areas with a population less than 20,000, 5-year estimates will be available. The first 5-year estimates, based on ACS data collected from 2005 through 2009, will be released in 2010.

https://www.census.gov/history/www/programs/demographic/american_community_survey.html

[atreides1]

26. Uh huh

http://www.businessinsider.com/2020-census-citizenship-question-2018-3

I'm expected to believe that the Sessions DOJ is really concerned with protecting minority voting rights? Didn't he already gut that section of the DOJ and reassign most of the personnel who were working there to other departments?

They may regret this, considering that there are many non-citizens in lots of Red States, including Texas and a good portion of the rest of the South!!!


"On December 12, 2017, DOJ requested that the Census Bureau reinstate a citizenship question on the decennial census to provide census block level citizenship voting age population (CVAP) data that is not currently available from government surveys. DOJ and the courts use CVAP data for the enforcement of Section 2 of the VRA, which protects minority voting rights."

[Cattledog]

27. The right used to say the census was a communist plot.

[Gothmog]

29. From AG Holder's group

Link to tweet

[dembotoz]

39. can you just not answer the question?

leave it blank

[FBaggins]

40. Yes and no

It's required by law... but the punishment for not answering is small and rarely applied.

That's doesn't much matter, because the overwhelming majority of people do answer... and what you probably can't do is start a formal campaign to encourage others to break the law too (different offense... much larger punishment).