[EL] “Alarm at Proposal to Ask About Citizenship Status in Census”

[John Tanner]

It would be helpful to establish the extent of deterioration in ACS responses for this past year — and, I suppose, for 2016 — amid the heated immigration rhetoric (if I can dignify it with that term).  I know that the Census Bureau takes a long time to fully crunch numbers, but there may be a basis for a first cut estimate

> On Jan 3, 2018, at 10:40 AM, Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu> wrote:
> 
> “FEC Commissioners Feud Over PAC Designation” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96680>
> Posted on January 2, 2018 8:28 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96680> by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
> Bloomberg BNA: <http://news.bna.com/mpdm/MPDMWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=125918625&vname=mpebulallissues&jd=00000160b85bdda6a7f9fc7bd2b60002&split=0>
> FEC commissioners are feuding over when a nonprofit group spending to influence elections can be regulated as a political action committee.
> Democratic Federal Election Commission member Ellen Weintraub said in a statement <http://eqs.fec.gov/eqsdocsMUR/17044435602.pdf> that a recent court decision mandates that a nonprofit can become a PAC if it spends heavily on campaigns in a particular year.
> But Republican members Caroline Hunter and Lee Goodman said in a separate statement <http://eqs.fec.gov/eqsdocsMUR/17044435569.pdf> that a group shouldn’t be considered a PAC unless its “major purpose” is to influence elections. The entire history of the group’s spending—not a single year—must be assessed to determine its purpose, they said….
> The FEC announced Dec. 22 that it had dismissed the New Models case following a 3-2 party-line vote of the commissioners.
> Steven Walther, who holds a Democratic seat on the FEC, joined Weintraub in voting to follow a staff recommendation to investigate New Models. Walther, however, didn’t sign on to Weintraub’s statement of reasons for her vote.
> FEC Republican Matthew Petersen joined Hunter and Goodman in voting to dismiss the case, but Petersen didn’t sign their 32-page statement on the case.
> <image001.png> <https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D96680&title=%E2%80%9CFEC%20Commissioners%20Feud%20Over%20PAC%20Designation%E2%80%9D>
> Posted in campaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, federal election commission <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=24>
>  
>  
> “Alarm at Proposal to Ask About Citizenship Status in Census” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96678>
> Posted on January 2, 2018 7:34 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96678> by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
> Must-read NYT: <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/us/census-citizenship-status-immigrants.html?_r=1>
>  A request by the Justice Department to ask people about their citizenship status in the 2020 census is stirring a broad backlash from census experts and others who say the move could wreck chances for an accurate count of the population — and, by extension, a fair redistricting of the House and state legislatures next decade.
> Their fear, echoed by experts in the Census Bureau itself, is that the Trump administration’s hard-line stance on immigration, and especially on undocumented migrants, will lead Latinos and other minorities, fearing prosecution, to ignore a census that tracks citizenship status.
> Their failure to participate would affect population counts needed not only to apportion legislative seats, but to distribute hundreds of billions of dollars in federal money to areas that most need it….
> The Justice Department request, first reported by ProPublica <https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-justice-department-pushes-for-citizenship-question-on-census-alarming-experts>, was made in a Dec. 12 letter that said more detailed information on citizenship was critical to enforcing Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which bans racial discrimination in voting.
> The number of voting-age citizens is one measure used to determine whether the minority population in a legislative district is sufficient to determine an election, and the department said the results of the American Community Survey, a smaller annual review that covers about 10 percent of the population each decade, were too imprecise to be reliable.
> Voting rights advocates said, however, that the data from that smaller survey had long been used effectively to enforce the law. They said that adding a citizenship question to the census would not enhance voting rights, but suppress them by reducing the head count of already undercounted minority groups, particularly the fast-growing Hispanic population.
> <image001.png> <https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D96678&title=%E2%80%9CAlarm%20at%20Proposal%20to%20Ask%20About%20Citizenship%20Status%20in%20Census%E2%80%9D>
> Posted in election administration <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, redistricting <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>
>  
>  
> Doing My First Reddit AMA Over at “Neutral Politics” Today at Noon Eastern <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96675>
> Posted on January 2, 2018 7:50 am <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96675> by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
> Over here <https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/>.
>  
> Update:
> You can read all the questions and answers here <https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/7nnncq/this_is_rick_hasen_ready_for_my_first_ama/?st=jbxxubx6&sh=75953016>.
> <image001.png> <https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D96675&title=Doing%20My%20First%20Reddit%20AMA%20Over%20at%20%E2%80%9CNeutral%20Politics%E2%80%9D%20Today%20at%20Noon%20Eastern>
> Posted in Uncategorized <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
>  
>  
> -- 
> Rick Hasen
> Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
> UC Irvine School of Law
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