Newly uncovered documents written by a late GOP strategist blow the lid off the party's citizenship census question scam
President Donald Trump and his administration have insisted that putting a question about American citizenship on the 2020 census is crucial to securing fair elections.
However, newly unearthed documents written by a late GOP strategist show that the citizenship question is really about a partisan gerrymandering scheme.
The New York Times reports that documents discovered on a hard drive of late GOP operative Thomas B. Hofeller reveal 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.”
Hofeller’s study of Texas legislative districts, for example, concluded that the citizenship question “would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites,” while hurting the political clout of Latino voters.
Hofeller explicitly states in his analysis that the citizenship question on the census is necessary because otherwise there is no way to create a thorough database of eligible voters.
“Without a question on citizenship being included on the 2020 Decennial Census questionnaire, the use of citizen voting age population is functionally unworkable,” he argued.
The documents also show that Hofeller wrote a portion of a draft letter sent to the Department of Justice during Trump’s presidency that argues the citizenship question is necessary to protect the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Critics of the citizenship question have called it a naked power grab whose purpose is to frighten even documented immigrants from filling out their census forms for fear of being targeted for deportation.
