Nevertheless, watch your backs
by Tom Sullivan
Image via Twitter / @eloc8
The Republican Party’s disregard for voting rights is enough to make one cynical. How cynical?
Tuesday afternoon at 4:29 p.m. EDT, Ari Berman (“Give Us the Ballot“) tweeted, “Rigged census one of biggest threats to democracy in US. Trump admin dropping push for citizenship question is enormous deal.”
Champagne corks were popping among members of the voting rights community. Government lawyers had confirmed an hour earlier that the administration had decided to print 2020 census forms without adding the controversial citizenship question the Supreme Court struck down in Department of Commerce v. New York.
My first reaction was elation. My next one was heightened alert for a knife in the back.
By 9:08 p.m. EDT, Election Law Blog’s Rick Hasen added to that sense of foreboding by tweeting, “All’s Well That Ends Well, or All’s Well That Evenwel? How the Commerce Department May Still Help States to Draw Districts with Equal Numbers of Voter Eligible Persons to Minimize Hispanic (and Democratic) Voting Strength.”
Hasen explains:
But as I understand it from people who have been following this [more] 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.
Readers may recall the administration’s true purpose in adding a citizenship question to the census, as revealed in the Hofeller documents, was to enable drawing districts based on citizen voting age population (CVAP) instead of total population. In addition to a citizenship question depressing minority response to the census, drawing CVAP districts “would clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats” and “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites,” Hofeller wrote.
In Evenwel v Abbott (2016), plaintiffs in Texas argued that drawing legislative districts based on total population violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment by diluting the votes of the voting eligible population. A favorable ruling could have shifted power to older, whiter, more conservative areas. In a unanimous 8-0 decision affirming the constitutionality of drawing districts based on total population, Justice Ginsburg wrote:
In sum, the rule appellants urge has no mooring in the Equal Protection Clause. The Texas Senate map, we therefore conclude, complies with the requirements of the one-person, one-vote principle. Because history, precedent, and practice suffice to reveal the infirmity of appellants’ claims, we need not and do not resolve whether, as Texas now argues, States may draw districts to equalize voter-eligible population rather than total population.
The last statement leaves a hole big enough for red states to drive a semi decked out in Confederate flags through if only they could get the citizenship data to redistrict using CVAP. They may yet try the Evenwel gambit with data provided to the Census Bureau by the Social Security Administration, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.
Republicans stretching the law to the breaking point for partisan advantage is becoming ever more strident. Texas Republican congressman Chip Roy urged the president to simply ignore the Supreme Court ruling and add the citizenship question because he can.
This is a sitting Republican member of Congress urging the President to ignore a Supreme Court order.
I'm looking for his colleagues denouncing this.
The warning signs that the GOP wants to abandon our system of govt for one that simply gives them power are blinking red. https://t.co/QcS02tVa8H— Ian Bassin (@ianbassin) July 3, 2019
From the Executive branch on down, Republican leaders treat the law as an inconvenience applicable only to lessers.
At a strategy meeting last weekend, I told a friend I was more focused on state-level races and the U.S. Senate than the presidential contest. So long as Mitch McConnell controls the Senate, Democrats holding the presidency is no guarantee of legislative progress, nor even of McConnell allowing a Democratic president to appoint another nominee to the Supreme Court.
The last statement drew an “Oh, come on” smile, as if that could ever happen. Where were people during the last year of the Obama presidency?
Memories may be short, but habits have a frustrating way of hanging around long after they’ve become obsolete. Democrats on the Hill seem determined to keep conducting business on the basis of rules — and a system of government — their opponents have already abandoned.
Lights are blinking red? There will be tanks on display in the streets of Washington, D.C. tomorrow.
But not on parade:
“You’ve got to be pretty careful with the tanks because the roads have a tendency not to like to carry heavy tanks so we have to put them in certain areas but we have the brand new Sherman tanks and we have the brand new Abrams tanks,” Trump added.
While the US continues to operate the M1 Abrams tank the US military has not used World War II-era M4 Sherman tanks since the 1950s.
Hail to the Chief.