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Census Shocker! Only Americans Will Be Counted

Donald Trump has this crazy idea that only actual US citizens matter for redistricting purposes
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Do you think that people in the US illegally ought to be counted by the US Census as Americans? Donald Trump does not, but the Democratic Party does. Look:

The 2020 census will ask respondents whether they are United States citizens, the Commerce Department announced Monday night, agreeing to a Trump administration request with highly charged political and social implications that many officials feared would result in a substantial undercount.

In a statement released Monday, the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had “determined that reinstatement of a citizenship question on the 2020 decennial census questionnaire is necessary to provide complete and accurate census block level data,” allowing the department to accurately measure the portion of the population eligible to vote.

But his decision immediately invited a legal challenge: Xavier Becerra, California’s attorney general, plans to sue the Trump administration over the decision, a spokeswoman for Mr. Becerra said late Monday.

Critics of the change and experts in the Census Bureau itself have said that, amid a fiery immigration debate, the inclusion of a citizenship question could prompt immigrants who are in the country illegally not to respond. That would result in a severe undercount of the population — and, in turn, faulty data for government agencies and outside groups that rely on the census. The effects would also bleed into the redistricting of the House and state legislatures in the next decade.

This is revealing. The Democrats want people who are living in the US illegally to be counted as citizens, even if they are not eligible to vote. The Democrats know that if the Census numbers count non-citizens, it will give Democrats more power when it comes to redistricting. This is power that they don’t deserve, because hey, illegal aliens are not American citizens, and should have no say on how power is apportioned in elected office.

In this case, Trump is doing what he was elected to do. Good.

UPDATE: Noah172 writes:

Can you clarify the post? Trump is not proposing that the census stop counting non-citizen residents. Rather, he is ordering that the census form merely ask citizenship status along with the other demographic data it compiles. The Democrats fear that illegals will choose to avoid being counted because of the question (and that the census will reveal just how many foreigners we have living here — the 11-12 million illegal figure quoted in the media dates back to the early 2000s), but Trump is not actually forbidding such counting.

Reader Jones writes:

You should retract this one. Current U.S. election law on apportionment is decided at the state level and the rule in all states, as far as I’m aware, is that all residents, not just citizens, are counted for the purpose of apportionment. In Evenwel v. Abbott, the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of these state rules, 8-0.

https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/evenwel-v-abbott/

The dispute is not about whether states should decide apportionment only on the basis of citizenship, which is not the rule anywhere. The dispute is about whether even asking about citizenship will cause undocumented people to avoid answering the census, thereby leading to an undercount of residency, not citizenship.

Much like the South under the 3/5ths rule, there isn’t an obvious political valence to the rule. For example, if you’re counted for apportionment but still can’t vote, in a conservative state, then that just increases the number of representatives that go to that conservative state.

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