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U.S. NEWS Thursday 21 July 2022

Secret memo links citizenship question to apportionment

By MIKE SCHNEIDER congressional seats each population for the purpose
Associated Press state gets. of redrawing of congressio-
Trump officials tried to add Experts feared a citizenship nal and legislative districts
a citizenship question to question would scare off could be advantageous
the 2020 census in a move Hispanics and immigrants to Republicans and non-
experts said would benefit from participating in the Hispanic whites.
Republicans despite initial 2020 census, whether they The August 2017 memo
doubts among some in the were in the country legally prepared by senior political
administration that it was or not. The citizenship ques- appointee James Uthmeier
legal, according to an in- tion was blocked by the Su- went to the heart of inter-
vestigative report released preme Court in 2019. In the actions by the Commerce
Wednesday by a congres- high court's decision, Chief and Justice departments to
sional oversight committee. Justice John Roberts said come up with a contrived
The report offers a smok- the reason the Commerce reason for the citizenship This Sunday, April 5, 2020, file photo, shows an envelope
ing gun of sorts — a secret Department had given for question, the House report containing a 2020 census letter mailed to a U.S. resident in
Detroit.
memo the committee ob- the citizenship question — it said. Associated Press
tained after a two-year le- was needed for the Justice An initial draft of the memo
gal battle — showing that a Department's enforcement raised doubts that a citi-
top Trump appointee in the of the Voting Rights Act — zenship question would not intend to distinguish be- appointees at the Census
Commerce Department appeared to be contrived. be legal since it can only tween citizens and non-cit- Bureau to three.
explored apportionment The Commerce Depart- be added to the once- izens" for apportionment," Even though many of the
as a reason to include the ment oversees the Census a-decade census if the Uthmeier wrote in the early Trump administration's
question. Bureau, which conducts Commerce Secretary con- draft. political efforts ultimately
"The Committee's investi- the count used to deter- cludes that gathering that The House report says Uth- failed, some advocates
gation has exposed how a mine political power and information in survey sam- meier researched using believe they did have an
group of political appoin- the distribution of $1.5 tril- pling is not feasible. But a Voting Rights Act enforce- impact, resulting in signifi-
tees sought to use the cen- lion in federal funding each later draft removed that ment as a reason for the cantly larger undercounts
sus to advance an ideolog- year. Then-Commerce Sec- concern and added that citizenship question three of most racial and ethnic
ical agenda and potential- retary Wilbur Ross testified the Commerce Secretary months before the Justice minorities in the 2020 cen-
ly exclude non-citizens from before the oversight com- had the discretion to add a Department requested it, sus compared to the 2010
the apportionment count," mittee that apportionment citizenship question for rea- and hand-delivered his census.
the report released by the wasn't the reason for the sons other than apportion- memo with that suggestion Republican lawmakers
House Committee on Over- citizenship question, even ment. to the Justice Department said the bill would make
sight and Reform said. though the Commerce De- An even later draft re- in order to avoid a digital the Census Bureau direc-
It has long been specu- partment memo suggests moved apportionment as fingerprint. tor unaccountable and
lated that the Trump ad- otherwise, the House report an exception to the Com- Uthmeier, who now is chief limit the ability to add im-
ministration wanted the said. merce Secretary's discre- of staff to Florida Gov. Ron portant questions to the
citizenship question in order "I have never intentionally tion and added "there is DeSantis, didn't immedi- census form. They offered
to exclude people in the misled Congress or inten- nothing illegal or uncon- ately respond to an email an amendment that would
country illegally from ap- tionally said anything in- stitutional about adding a inquiry Wednesday. add a citizenship question
portionment numbers. correct under oath," Ross citizenship question." In an effort to prevent fu- to the next census and ex-
The report includes sev- said during a 2019 hearing An early draft of the memo ture attempts at politiciz- clude people in the U.S. il-
eral drafts showing how before the oversight com- also noted that using a citi- ing the census, members legally from the apportion-
the memo evolved from mittee. zenship data for apportion- of the oversight committee ment count, claiming their
recognizing that doing so According to the House ment was likely unconsti- on Wednesday debated inclusion dilutes the politi-
would likely be unconsti- committee report, during tutional and went against a bill introduced by U.S. cal power of citizens. The
tutional to coming up with planning for the citizenship 200 years of precedent, but Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D- Fourteenth Amendment
other justifications for add- question, an adviser to the that language also was re- N.Y., that would require requires that all people in
ing the citizenship question. Commerce Department moved in later drafts. new questions for the head each U.S. state be counted
The apportionment pro- reached out to a Repub- The Founding Fathers' "con- count to be vetted by Con- for apportionment.
cess uses state population lican redistricting expert scious choice" not to ex- gress, prohibit a Census Bu- Committee members
counts gathered during the who had written that using clude people in the U.S. reau director from being voted down the amend-
once-a-decade census to citizen voting-age popu- illegally from the count fired without cause and ment and passed the bill
divide up the number of lation instead of the total "suggests the Founders did limit the number of political Wednesday afternoon.q