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Jim Saksa at Democracy Docket:
Unsatisfied with norm-busting mid-decade partisan gerrymanders, House Republicans are now laying down the intellectual groundwork for an unlawful mid-decade census. At a House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government hearing Wednesday, Republicans claimed counting noncitizens and statistical errors in the 2020 Census justified a recount to give the GOP more seats in Congress, even though federal law prohibits a mid-decade census being used for apportionment. “These errors are impossible to correct without an entirely new census,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), the subcommittee chairman.
“The 2020 Census should be called the sanctuary census,” Roy said. “Just like sanctuary jurisdictions, the 2020 Census unconstitutionally put illegal aliens ahead of American citizens.” The Apportionment Clause of the Constitution calls for congressional seats to be divided among the states according to their populations, “counting the whole number of persons in each State.”
President Donald Trump was serving his first term in 2020, and his Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, oversaw the decennial census that year. Courts blocked an attempt to reinstate a citizenship question on that year’s census, holding that the administration failed to follow procedural laws. Despite that, Trump has repeatedly called for a redo of 2020’s count that would exclude undocumented immigrants. Congress would need to appropriate funds for a mid-decade census and amend standing statutes to allow that count to be used to reapportion congressional seats among the states.
Republicans seek to conduct an unconstitutional mid-decade US Census, all to rig the electoral college and the House in their favor.
