What's In a Question?

President Trump views the Supreme Court decision, last week, against the addition of a controversial citizenship question to the 2020 Census as a temporary setback as opposed to an unfavorable conclusion.  While Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that after the decision the administration would be dropping the effort, tweets on Wednesday and Thursday has spurred the Justice and Commerce departments to pull out the stops and burn the midnight oil in order to come up with a new legal rationale for the inclusion of the question in time to meet the 2p.m. deadline today (Friday, 7/5/2019) set by a federal judge in Maryland to explain how it plans to proceed.  While this renewed fight may come at the ire of moderate Republicans who believe it to be fruitless and a waste of time, there is still a vocal contingent urging the president to continue the effort.  President Trump has even hinted at the potential of getting the question back on the form through use of executive order.

The tie between the Census and the formation of electoral districts makes any matter regarding the addition or subtraction of questions from the form inherently political.  Ross has stated previously that the proposed citizenship question would use the same wording as what is already in use in the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.  Supporters of the addition of the question, such as The Heritage Foundation’s Senior Legal Fellow Hans A. von Spakovsky, view its addition as common sense in order to attain accurate data on the US population.  While detractors, such as Rep. Ilhan Omar, suggest that such a question would discourage immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, from participating in the Census.  This would, as they argue, lead to an undercount of the U.S. population and would impact the amount of federal funds and congressional seats going to districts with larger immigrant populations.

There is no question that the ruling served as a major setback for President Trump.  But it is important to understand that the ruling does not kill the issue, it merely sends it back to lower courts to be hashed out.  In a dissent joined by Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the court should have stopped its analysis when it determined that the citizenship question was both constitutional and within the authority of the Commerce Secretary, and that by doubting Secretary Ross’ motives ignored the “the presumption of regularity” the courts owe to federal agencies.  Further cementing Justice Thomas as a bright and shining example of originalism on the Court today.

Now that we’ve gotten the context portion of this piece out of the way, lets jump into the hard reality.  Politics is a zero-sum game.  What helps Republicans hurts Democrats, and vice versa.  The fact that in 2019 a federal form tasked with gathering demographic data about people living in the United States asking if people living within the United States are citizens of the United States is ridiculous.  The fearmongering being spun up on the Left is blatantly irresponsible.  Let’s just clear the air, the data gathered by the Census cannot be used by federal law enforcement agencies to rally up illegal immigrants for mass deportation.  Title 13 of the US Code (The Census Law) is very straight forward, responses to Census Bureau surveys and censuses are required to be kept confidential and used for statistical purposes only.  The Census Bureau only publishes aggregated statics which do not reveal information about particular individuals, households or businesses.

This question is not malevolent or even unique to the United States in the “Trump Age”.  The United Nations recommends that its member countries ask a citizenship question on their censuses.  The United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany all ask the question.  Only in the U.S. has this issue been considered controversial.  Former Attorney General Eric “Too Fast Too Furious” Holder claim that the question is “irresponsible” and “unconstitutional”.  I’d beg to differ.  The question traces it’s roots back to none other than Thomas Jefferson, who first proposed the question in 1800.  The question officially became part of the decennial census in 1820 and was included on every census until 1950 when it was moved to the “long form”, which was sent to one in every six households, until its discontinuation in 2000.  Since then the question has been sent with the American Community Survey.  To recap, the question traces it roots back to the father of the Declaration of Independence, has been asked for longer than it has not been asked.

Regarding Holder’s doubts of constitutionality, I’d urge him to dust off his pocket constitution (I’m positive I’m not the only one who has one) and flip to Art. 1, Sec. 2, Cl. 3 wherein the power to conduct the census is given to the Congress, and in 13 U.S. Code Sec. 5, the power is delegated to the Secretary of Commerce who “shall prepare questionnaires, and shall determine the inquiries, and the number, form, and subdivisions thereof, for the statistics, surveys, and censuses provided for in this title.”

In my time analyzing the bureaucracy I’ve found that Occam’s razor tends to apply.  When there exist multiple explanations for an occurrence, the one that requires the least speculation is usually correct.  In reality this citizenship question is nothing more than a mundane bureaucratic form change.  One which is inline with numerous other nations and allies throughout the world.  The Democrats are providing lip service stating that they are looking out for vulnerable immigrant communities, while in reality they are simply fearmongering.  They don’t care about response rates; they care about how the returns will affect future electoral maps.  The reality is that the question provides valuable data which will improve the electoral equality for all U.S. citizens by staying true to the principle, one person, one vote.