Friday, July 12, 2019

Or you could look at it this way...


Alternatively:

But as I understand it from people who have been following this closely than I am, the Census Department is still going to create citizenship data which can then be used for redistricting. Ross ordered the Census Bureau to compile citizenship data through existing administrative records, something bureau experts had told him would be cheaper and more accurate than a question anyway.

Now maybe by the time this data is compiled, a Democratic administration could block its release. But if Trump is reelected, these data could be made available, and states could try the Evenwel gambit.

And on that point:






That goes on for four more tweets, including a discussion of the possibility of basing redistricting on citizens only, a case currently in court in Alabama, where they've already tried that theory.  (The Evenwel opinion Hasen cites above actually rejected an equal protection claim that including non-citizens for apportionment purposes dilutes the representation of citizens, so I'm not sure it leaves open what he thinks it leaves open.)

Assuming, as Tribe and TPM do, that this spells real trouble discounts the evidence of real incompetence in the effort just to get this question on the census:

Barr tried to claim that the Supreme Court’s decision blocking the citizenship question was actually a vindication for the administration because it found the question “would be perfectly lawful.” Of course, “would be” is the key point here. Few have argued that including a citizenship question couldn’t be legal under some circumstances, just that the way the Trump administration went about it and tried to defend it — not to mention the reasons it had for this move — rendered the act unlawful. In other words, Barr was admitting that a more competent administration could have successfully added the question, but this one couldn’t.

“Put simply, the impediment was a logistical impediment, not a legal one,” Barr asserted.

In fact, there is a legal impediment to adding the question — that impediment is the Supreme Court’s ruling. It’s true that, if the administration had more time, it could have potentially been victorious in another attempt at adding the question. But that just highlight’s the administration’s incompetencies.

Aside from the fact the Census Bureau will pretty much have its hands full in the next year doing it's Constitutionally mandated duty (and fulfilling the only reason it exists), there's the fact the Administration could have had this outcome 18 months ago and gotten started on the slouch toward Bethlehem then, when it might have achieved its goal by 2020.  But that didn't happen, did it?  This Administration, in other words, would screw up a three-car funeral procession.  Yet they're going to be competent enough to get Republican controlled states to gerrymander on the basis of citizenship in the next 10 years?

Sorry, I don't think the sky is falling quite that rapidly.

Is Trump expecting President Trump, Jr. to see this through?*

*And I haven't even addressed how this "executive action" is going to affect the cases in Maryland and New York, especially in the Maryland case where the court initially agreed with the DOJ that the DOC, not the POTUS, was the "decision maker" in this matter.  As Wang's tweets point out, much of what is laid out there as justification for the action, is the opposite of what the DOJ has been arguing in court for 18 months.  That's gonna leave a mark....

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2 comments:

  1. The Thought Criminal11:13 AM

    Or, maybe, Democrats will be in the control of state houses where Republcan have blocked reform in handing the writing of maps to non-partisan agencies and they can use it to gerrymander those states. If the Supreme Court wants to have partisan gerrymandering as the law of the land, I say Democrats should figure that's the lay of the land. In politics, one-sided principle turns into other-sided enabling.

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  2. rustypickup12:53 PM

    At the last census the Republicans pushed back hard against using statistical techniques to adjust for under counting (the feeling being under counting was higher in urban environments and therefore it was better for Republicans to have a strict vote). The only way to do citizen apportionment would be by statistical analysis since there won't be a citizen question. While I don't put it past the SCOTUS to make up a distinction (dignity of the states! See also First Amendment cases and abortion), I can't see how you have estimates for one and not the other. Either both or neither.

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