2020 Census

[DaveP]

Can someone explain what's wrong with asking if someone is a citizen or not?

I don't see how it can affect voting patterns, because presumeably if you aint a citizen you don't get to vote anyways.

I can't vote in France because I'm not a citizen of France and I accept that.

DaveP

 

[JohnRoberts]

Can someone explain what's wrong with asking if someone is a citizen or not?

absolutely nothing... it was routinely done in the past. SCOTUS is only involved now because of a (partisan) process issue. Since they need to start printing soon, enough delay is a win for their side.

I don't see how it can affect voting patterns, because presumeably if you aint a citizen you don't get to vote anyways.

it has nothing to do with that vote, it's about entitlement money and legislative influence.

State representation in the congress is apportioned based on state population, so states want to claim higher populations to get more representatives in the house of representatives and therefore more votes to pass favorable legislation that benefits them.

Secondarily and no less important, federal entitlement spending is portioned out based state populations so more people means more guvment money.

I can't vote in France because I'm not a citizen of France and I accept that.

DaveP

This is tangled up in divisive politics. The long game is get more actual voters from these cough undocumented immigrants, likely to support the left, but the short near game is all about legislative influence and getting a bigger piece of the federal pork pie.

JR

 

[pucho812]

I just assumed it was all part of the "resist" ideology.

 

[DaveP]

So to get more money it's OK to include illegal immigrants?

So the people traffickers are helping the Dems

Where is the moral high ground in that?

DaveP

 

[hodad]

If you bother to look at what the GOP was doing, their goal was to diminish the count of Latin Americans, regardless of citizenship.  The GOP is clinging desperately to power as it should be fading into irrelevance--rather than counting on the will of the people to guide the government, they have gone in for vote suppression, extreme partisan gerrymandering, & little things like this census question.  Some people can't take a hint that their time is up--they have no dignity, no morals, no ethical foundation left. 

 

[JohnRoberts]

So to get more money it's OK to include illegal immigrants?

The census should count everybody...  The partisan concern from the left is that asking the citizenship question will scare illegal oops I mean undocumented immigrants from completing the questionnaires honestly, or at all.

So the people traffickers are helping the Dems

Neither side can claim a moral high ground when it comes to immigration, but sadly the economic migrants being encouraged to claim amnesty disingenuously overwhelm a legal process ill equipped and underfunded to handle the extra traffic. 

[edit- yesterday a bipartisan funding bill was finally passed. Apparently the swamp dwellers wanted to leave town for holiday weekend and didn't want to have to answer too many constituent questions about this non-support. [/edit]

Where is the moral high ground in that?

DaveP

The political messaging from one side just invites more to make the dangerous transit.

The only good news is that with the house in full resist mode refusing to provide any relief, POTUS has made some progress getting Mexico to tighten up the free transit between their southern and northern borders... This is not a long term fix but gets some of the uglier situations out of our local news cycle.

Another medium term remedy is to get asylum seekers (the vast majority who get rejected) to apply for asylum while still in their home countries, so they don't get released here on their own recognizance to show up for later court hearings that they rarely do.

The swamp dwellers could fix this very quickly by closing loopholes in flawed legislation but are unlikely to change their spots before 2020. I expect more of the same.

This is just the latest political ink blot test. Both sides see different images  (flame suit on).

JR   

 

[Scodiddly]

The census affects number of House districts allotted, among other things. So yes, adding questions that would likely suppress participation is a fairness issue.  More diverse areas are likely to both include non-citizens and also vote towards the left, so this is a reasonable thing to be concerned about.

 

[iomegaman]

While the SCOTUS may have handed a partial victory to those who do not want the census question, (basically they ruled that it is perfectly ok to ask but there has to be a reason for modifying the census questionnaire and the Gov basically lied about the reason thus they upheld the lower court, the Gov CAN include the question if given a reasonable reason, which so far they lack the competence to do)...

What they left untouched was the gerrymandering of districts that gives an unfair advantage to one party via redistricting/inclusion/exclusion...which at this point the GOP has basically given up on playing fair with the voting process.

 

[JohnRoberts]

While the SCOTUS may have handed a partial victory to those who do not want the census question, (basically they ruled that it is perfectly ok to ask but there has to be a reason for modifying the census questionnaire and the Gov basically lied about the reason thus they upheld the lower court, the Gov CAN include the question if given a reasonable reason, which so far they lack the competence to do)...

SCOTUS has once again decided against wading into a purely political dispute (I wish I could do that).

What they left untouched was the gerrymandering of districts that gives an unfair advantage to one party via redistricting/inclusion/exclusion...which at this point the GOP has basically given up on playing fair with the voting process.

Gerrymandering (very old practice) is already illegal but hard to prosecute. SCOTUS kicked that case back to the state(s) to manage.

I would like to see a little more focus on actual Russian interference attempted in 2016 and possible remedies to tighten up accountability of social media accounts/behavior.

Zukerberg continues to beg for government regulation, knowing that will just strengthen his moat against smaller competitors.  Of course this is difficult.

JR

 

[living sounds]

Come on. You are very far down the partisan rabbithole if you don't think that districts like these are an obvious attempt to distort representation:

It should be a political decision, but Republicans clearly are not willing to end the practise. It's the only way they can keep up majorities.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Come on. You are very far down the partisan rabbithole if you don't think that districts like these are an obvious attempt to distort representation:

Don't put words in my mouth... are your hands clean?

It should be a political decision, but Republicans clearly are not willing to end the practise. It's the only way they can keep up majorities.

I suggest that you vote democrat...  8)

JR

 

[living sounds]

Don't put words in my mouth... are your hands clean?

Where I live the Federal Constitutional Court (our Supreme Court) has unanimously and expressly limited the effects of gerrymandering in 2013. Very different system, but the ideas behind it ("one person, one vote") are very much the same.

And yes, my hands are clean, thank you very much. I believe in principles, not tribes.

To be honest, it pains me to see what is going on in the country that was supposed to be guided by humanitarian principles before all others in modern history. Instead it's held hostage by small minded people like Trump, McConnell and Kavenaugh.

 

[iomegaman]

Where I live the Federal Constitutional Court (our Supreme Court) has unanimously and expressly limited the effects of gerrymandering in 2013. Very different system, but the ideas behind it ("one person, one vote") are very much the same.

And yes, my hands are clean, thank you very much. I believe in principles, not tribes.

To be honest, it pains me to see what is going on in the country that was supposed to be guided by humanitarian principles before all others in modern history. Instead it's held hostage by small minded people like Trump, McConnell and Kavenaugh.

This is what happens when the Evangelicals get in power...I was a preachers kid, involved in church my whole life but the christianity being espoused by the GOP is nothing near the teachings of the 1st century Jewish Rabbi executed by his own moral majority in bed with the military...this and making the pursuit of money the primary litmus test for political inertia...

 

[DaveP]

This is what happens when the Evangelicals get in power...I was a preachers kid, involved in church my whole life but the christianity being espoused by the GOP is nothing near the teachings of the 1st century Jewish Rabbi executed by his own moral majority in bed with the military...this and making the pursuit of money the primary litmus test for political inertia...

Amen to that
DaveP

 

[Matador]

State representation in the congress is apportioned based on state population, so states want to claim higher populations to get more representatives in the house of representatives and therefore more votes to pass favorable legislation that benefits them.

Secondarily and no less important, federal entitlement spending is portioned out based state populations so more people means more guvment money.

It turns out that this was exactly backwards:  the reason for the citizenship question on the census was to depress participation in blue states, thus giving more representation in red states.  It was another attempt at a gerrymandering play, nothing more.

To answer the original question by Dave: this is why it's dangerous to ask such questions on a census.

 

[iturnknobs]

White Europeans, like me came to this country uninvited. We committed genocide, clearing the countryside for ourselves. Everyone deserves to be able to peacefully come to this country, seeing as we did NOT. The citizenship question intentionally causes inaccuracies in the census and primarily racists, whose previous generations came uninvited, support this. If these people do not commit genocide upon coming to this country, they are already better people than us. Shame on this country.

 

[iturnknobs]

The I-9 form exists for a reason. I believe that reason is to prove citizenship before being hired in this country. Employers seeking to profit by breaking the law and underpay people are the problem, not those seeking a better life.

 

[dmp]

The Republican case got blown open when the daughter of a Republican strategist  turned over a stash of flash drives she found while going through his stuff (he unexpectedly passed away).
This Republican strategist (Hofeller) had a bunch of communications with the Trump admin and the GOP explicitly strategizing on manipulating the census for partisan reasons (to depress Democratic voting power) while also developing cover stories (lies) for why they might be doing it that wouldn't be illegal.  The Trump admin had argued before the court that partisan reasons were not involved at all in adding the census question.
When this evidence was given to SCOTUS it blew apart the Trump admin case. They got caught lying to the court.
SCOTUS did not rule that the citizenship question could not be on the census - rather the 5-4 decision said the administration needed to make a case for why (a case that is not a fabrication of lies).
So the SCOTUS decision sent it back to the lower court. Now the entire Trump legal team tried to leave the case the other day and the lower court judge denied it (rats trying to flee a sinking ship). It looks like the lawyers are going to get in trouble for lying to the court.
It's an incredible story of lies and political dirty tricks.

 

[dmp]

The I-9 form exists for a reason. I believe that reason is to prove citizenship before being hired in this country. Employers seeking to profit by breaking the law and underpay people are the problem, not those seeking a better life.

Exactly - this is the irony of people who resent immigrants taking their jobs. The person who made the decision was the boss.

In reality however competition means that all companies have to do it or they go out of business.  When the government enforcement of the rules is weakened, businesses have to start gaming the system since all their competitors are. 
If the government imposed a employment verification system and started cracking down on under the table workers AND made enforcement punitive (a heavy penalty) businesses would change overnight.
This is the hypocrisy of Trump (one of many). He hired illegal employees himself for his businesses.
If he wanted to cut down on illegal immigration he could reduce demand by cracking down on businesses that hire illegal employees. But nothing on that from Trump. Instead he puts children in cages - trying to increase their suffering -  as a punitive demonstration for his base to ogle.    He's just playing a game with his base.
History is not going to be kind on this era.

 

[JohnRoberts]

It turns out that this was exactly backwards:  the reason for the citizenship question on the census was to depress participation in blue states, thus giving more representation in red states.  It was another attempt at a gerrymandering play, nothing more.

To answer the original question by Dave: this is why it's dangerous to ask such questions on a census.

Another partisan ink blot test...

The illegal undocumented migrants are the pawns in this political chess game as the left pedals as fast as they can to draw in even more, if not to get their votes (they can't vote legally yet, but some candidates are talking about a fast track to citizenship, and free stuff for them), to presumably get increased representatives in congress (mo legislative and funding bill votes) for the districts they gravitate to.

Hypocritically the business community (typically conservative voters) likes the idea of cheap labor, so looks the other way.  Right now employment is tight so more legal workers would be a good thing.  (Wages are back to increasing at pre-crisis rate, 3% but productivity increases so far have muted inflationary pressure, keeping central bankers in check about raising rates, might even lower. )

Historically it seems of value to know the answer to this question that we have asked on most census forms over the decades, and most other countries ask too. I am a little suspicious that we don't already know the answer to this, the WWW seems to know a lot about me while for some odd reason FB is pushing ads at me as if I live in NJ (not even close but amusing).  :

I am not smart enough to know every politician's motives for every move, but SCOTUS seems to want to force a public discussion about the official reasons behind this question, so stand by for formal answers.

Its shocking to learn that the political parties want to hold/gain power... shocking I say. 

JR

PS: a NY federal judge has refused to allow the administration to change its legal team for this census question case. So it looks like they got some splainin to do to that judge, for any funny business.  More political sound bites to follow.