For years, Rethuglicans have been trying -- usually successfully -- to rig the voting process to ensure that they choose the voters, not the other way around. Gerrymandering Congressional districts so that Dems are at a disadvantage by having their voters concentrated in one or two districts, while Rethugs minimize Dem voters in theirs is one popular tactic. Voter ID laws that discriminate against the poor, and students are another. But the Rethugs, through plutocrat and gnome Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, have devised a backdoor scheme to skew population counts to disadvantage Dems through the decennial census, which will be taken in 2020.
The Rethug scheme is to get an undercounting of the minority vote -- especially Hispanic -- by including a question in the census about citizenship designed to suppress responses from those communities. The State of New York is suing the Commerce Department over the proposed inclusion of a citizenship question, and the Supreme Court will hear the case today. From the New York Times:
"Critics say that adding the question would undermine the accuracy of the census because both legal and unauthorized immigrants might refuse to fill out the forms. By one government estimate, about 6.5 million people might decide not to participate.The attempt to scare off people from responding to the census by using a bogus citizenship question would appear to violate the Constitution:
That could reduce Democratic representation when congressional districts are allocated in 2021 and affect the distribution of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending. Courts have found that Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas could risk losing seats in the House, and that several states could lose federal money." (our emphasis)
"The census case has its roots in the text of the Constitution, which requires an 'actual enumeration' every 10 years, with the House of Representatives to be apportioned based on 'the whole number of persons in each state.'" (our emphasis)Not surprisingly, the genesis of this scheme appears to have originated in the corrupt and racist mind of former Trump advisor Steve "Loose Cannon" Bannon, with some assist by immigrant-bashing Kris "KKK" Kobach:
"Documents disclosed in the case showed that Mr. Ross had discussed the citizenship issue early in his tenure with Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and an architect of the Trump administration’s tough policies against immigrants, and that Mr. Ross had met at Mr. Bannon’s direction with Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state and a vehement opponent of unlawful immigration." (our emphasis)With two Trump justices on the Court, added to the far-right Thomas and Alito, ruling on the case, there's no telling what kind of mischief will be done if they put their politics over the clear intent of the Constitution.
UPDATE:
At census args today, the justices sure looked like they had made up their minds and if so it’s 5-4 to uphold adding citizenship Q to the census form. #SCOTUS— Nina Totenberg (@NinaTotenberg) April 23, 2019
This is all part of a very specific plan to rig our political system against a growing, diverse, progressive majority and maintain power for an older, whiter, conservative minority that does the dirty work of protecting corporations from regulations and higher taxes. https://t.co/7fXwoWqa4s— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) April 23, 2019
