Ari Berman: GOP Docs Prove Census Citizenship Question Is About Preserving White Political Power | Democracy Now!

5.6.19

Ari Berman: GOP Docs Prove Census Citizenship Question Is About Preserving White Political Power | Democracy Now!: Newly surfaced documents reveal that a now-dead senior Republican strategist who specialized in gerrymandering was secretly behind the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The New York Times broke the story last week in an article that called Thomas Hofeller the “Michelangelo of gerrymandering.” When Hofeller died last August, he left behind a computer hard drive full of his notes and records. Hofeller’s estranged daughter found among the documents a 2015 study that said adding the citizenship question to the census “would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites” and “would clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats.” Census officials estimate 6.5 million people will not respond to the census if the citizenship question is added.