John Gore, the Trump Justice Department official who leads the Civil Rights Division, told Congress Friday that the department has “no position” on whether number of citizens should play a role in how congressional districts are apportioned.
He was responding to a question at a House Oversight Committee hearing from Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL), who asked whether knowing the number of citizenships should play a role in apportionment. Gore was behind the Justice Department request to add a citizenship question to the next Census.
“That’s a very important question. It’s a very important issue. It’s not one that the Department of Justice takes a position on,” Gore said. He added that the request was driven by enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, “not the separate question of how congressional seats are apportioned across the Constitution.”
The Constitution says that U.S. congressional districts should be drawn using total population. But some believe it’s an open question whether states can exclude non-citizens in drawing state legislative districts. Republicans in Missouri are already pushing to put such a requirement on November’s ballot.
Excluding non-citizens from redistricting stands to shift political power away from urban areas and other places with disproportionately high immigrant populations.
The Trump administration’s move to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census — which Gore was behind — could encourage more states to try to draw districts based on citizenship rather than total population, both critics and proponents of such an approach believe.
Gore was in front of the committee Friday for a hearing on the census.
My ass he has no position…
I never fully appreciated how many ways one could rig the elections in this country…
Trump was shooting straight when he said things were rigged, a brilliant political ploy…
Did anyone at the hearing really press him on the completely ludicrous assertion that this has anything to do with VRA enforcement?
Somehow, every DOJ from 1965-2018 has managed to enforce the VRA, often against great opposition, without it ever occurring to them to ask the Commerce Dept. to put a citizenship question on the Census – perhaps because adding that question will make VRA enforcement harder, not easier, by making the Census less accurate!
But this guy has the audacity to go with VRA enforcement as the fig leaf for this means of suppressing the Latino census count. I hope the hearing at least included some Democrats – maybe even a sane Republican? Is that too much to wish for? – pushing hard on this point.
If you’re at the hearing I’d love to hear how he responds. This is the most important story of this hearing. It’s not often that we can be absolutely sure, in real time, that the government is telling us a fake story for why they are taking an action, but this is one of those times.
No it doesn’t. The Constitution only says that the number of Representatives to which a state is entitled “shall be apportioned among the several states . . . according to their respective numbers.” This may imply, but does not mandate, that Congressional districts be based on total population.
Writing the opinion for the unanimous ruling in Evenwell v Abbott Justice Ginsberg said “By ensuring that each representative is subject to requests and suggestions from the same number of constituents, total population apportionment promotes equitable and effective representation,” but the decision did not require districting be based on total population. In his concurring opinion Justice Alito specifically stated that “Whether a state is permitted to use some measure other than total population is an important and sensitive question that we can consider if and when we have before us a state districting plan that, unlike the current Texas plan, uses something other than total population as the basis for equalizing the size of districts." Justice Thomas went even further in encouraging states to manipulate Congressional representation by opining that a state “can use total population, eligible voters, or any other nondiscriminatory voter base.”
As usual, the Constitution draws very broad strokes (for the most part) and leaves it to the legislature and the courts to decide ambiguous questions. “According to their respective numbers” does not specify citizenship, in my opinion. And, lest we forget, when written, Native Americans and blacks were counted as “3/5th” of a person. The argument of the “originalists” is bullshit; the Constitution is meant to be a living document, subject to amendment and interpretation. As for Gore’s assertion that the Trump DoJ takes “no position”? More bovine excrement.
I’m sure at the time the Founding Fathers didn’t want to piss off the wealthy French or Spanish landowners in the newly founded Union. It’s always about money. Besides, they’d have to figure out this wholly new ‘citizenship’ bullshit and the states wouldn’t want the feds to dictate who they counted on their team.