Deceased G.O.P. Strategist’s Hard Drives Reveal New Details on the Census Citizenship Question

New York Slimes ^ | May 30, 2019 | Michael Wines

[Olog-hai]

Thomas B. Hofeller achieved near-mythic status in the Republican Party as the Michelangelo of gerrymandering, the architect of partisan political maps that cemented the party’s dominance across the country.

But after he died last summer, his estranged daughter discovered hard drives in her father’s home that revealed something else: Mr. Hofeller had played a crucial role in the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

Files on those drives showed that he wrote a study in 2015 concluding that adding a citizenship question to the census would allow Republicans to draft even more extreme gerrymandered maps to stymie Democrats. And months after urging President Trump’s transition team to tack the question onto the census, he wrote the key portion of a draft Justice Department letter claiming the question was needed to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act — the rationale the administration later used to justify its decision.

Those documents, cited in a federal court filing Thursday by opponents seeking to block the citizenship question, have emerged only weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the legality of the citizenship question. Critics say adding the question would deter many immigrants from being counted and shift political power to Republican areas.

The disclosures represent the most explicit evidence to date that the Trump administration added the question to the 2020 census to advance Republican Party interests. …

[jospehm20]

Yep.

[Dr. Sivana]

Thanks for the info on Alabama v US Dept of Commerce. I appreciate the knowledge I pickup from the comments of other Freepers.

[Hostage]

You are correct.

Obama dispatched Rahm Emanuel to take over the 2010 census resulting in deleting the citizenship question from the long form which 20% of Americans receive randomly.

Deletion of the citizenship question allowed the ‘Apportionment Population’ to grow with the inclusion of massive numbers of illegals.

For those curious about this, note that not every human that breathes the air inside the borders of the USA and its territories is entitled to representation in Congress.

Only the Apportionment Population is entitled to have representatives in Congress.

Census takers count a lot of things but counting citizens is the whole purpose for the Census to begin with.

[yesthatjallen]

But after he died last summer, his estranged daughter discovered hard drives in her father’s home that revealed something else: Mr. Hofeller had played a crucial role in the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

They found their villain and now they're going to compose their narrative around him.

[montag813]

Kennedy would have fallen for this crap. Beer Man will not.

[Boogieman]

“Gerrymandering” now means any type of redistricting that doesn’t come out in favor of the Democrats.

[Gay State Conservative]

I've done a good deal of family history research in recent years...some of it done through census forms. The census returns I've seen all had a citizenship question.