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Trumps Pick to Run 2020 Census Has Defended Racial Gerrymandering and Voter Suppression Laws
The census will determine redistricting and voting rights enforcement.
Ari BermanJan. 2, 2018 6:00 AM
In June 2011, the North Carolina legislature hired Thomas Brunell, a professor of political science at the University of Texas at Dallas, to produce a report that would help defend the states new redistricting maps. The maps, approved by the Republican-controlled legislature, concentrated black voters, who tended to vote Democratic, into as few districts as possible in order to maximize the number of safe Republican districts. Under the Voting Rights Act, North Carolina had to get Justice Department approval for any voting changes, and so it asked Brunell to provide a justification for the maps.
Brunell argued that clustering black voters into a few districts was necessary to maintain their political influence. Though North Carolina was a racially integrated swing state, where black officials represented majority-white districts and vice versa, Brunells report found there is clear evidence for the presence of statistically significant racially polarized voting in North Carolina, necessitating majority-black districts. When the maps were challenged in court, state Republicans paid Brunell $300 an hour for research and $500 an hour for testimony as an expert witness.
The strategy workedfor a time. With the new maps in effect, Republicans controlled 10 of the states 13 congressional districts after the 2014 election and had a supermajority in the legislature. But in 2017, federal courts struck down two of North Carolinas congressional districts and 28 state legislative districts, calling the state maps among the largest racial gerrymanders ever encountered by a federal court. A unanimous three-judge court in North Carolina said Brunells generalized conclusions regarding racially polarized voting demonstrated a misunderstanding of the Voting Rights Act and fail to demonstrate a strong basis in evidence justifying the challenged districts as drawn.
According to multiple reports, Brunell will be appointed deputy director of the US Census Bureau and de facto leader of the 2020 census, which is constitutionally mandated to count every person in America. The census determines the level of representation for state and federal districts, and how $600 billion in federal funding is allocated to states and localities. (In addition to Brunell, the Trump administration has hired Kevin Quinley, a former research director for Kellyanne Conways polling firm whose clients included Breitbart News, as a special adviser to the Census Bureau.)
The deputy director of the Census Bureau has historically been a nonpartisan career civil servant. Brunell, a registered Republican, has no prior government experience and a deeply partisan background. He has testified or produced expert reports for Republicans in more than a dozen redistricting cases and has defended new voting restrictions passed by Republicans. His 2008 book, Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections Are Bad for America, argued that extreme partisan gerrymandering should be the norm because, he claimed, ultra-safe blue or red districts offered better representation for voters than competitive ones.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/trumps-pick-to-run-2020-census-has-defended-racial-gerrymandering-and-voter-suppression-laws/
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)Republicans can't do either if they don't hold office. Can they make getting the ability to vote hard? Yes, but they can not make it impossible without clearly violating the Constitution and when they do that, we need to hang them.
jodymarie aimee
(3,975 posts)Wisconsin....we said what you said 8 years ago...
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)Despite the extensive efforts of republicans, Florida is heading blue. The Democratic Presidential candidate has won two of the last three elections and Trump barely won the state two Novembers ago. My area of the state is growing and has moved from blood red to red-purple. The Orlando-Tampa area moved from red to solid blue. All this happened with republicans working their asses off to suppress. A person can register to vote at the Registry of Motor Vehicle branches, or at library branches. A valid Florida Driver's license is what is needed and if a person does not have that, a certified birth certificate from their birth state or a valid or just expired US Passport. Did republicans made registering easy, NO, they tried as hard as possible to prevent some people from voting. But they are failing because people worked to overcome their violations of voter rights.
Yes, we have Rick Scott, but he lied to win the first time and ran with a Black woman as his second. The legislature is republican led only because Cubans is South Florida vote in republicans from down in that part of the state (but that is changing as young Cubans are voting blue).
It is easy to say that someone is preventing you from doing something. It is far more meaningful and satisfying to defeat their efforts to hold you back.
SammyWinstonJack
(44,130 posts)LonePirate
(13,424 posts)This guy has Pences fingerprints all over him. 45 couldnt remember his name or anything about him if he was asked. The puppet continues to be a play toy for his masters unbeknownst to him.
Ms. Toad
(34,074 posts)Yes, it should be headed by a non-partisan expert. And yes, Republicans would be motivated to undercount people in urban areas (especially poor and/or homeless people) to give more seats in Congress to those who are more likely to think like them.
That said, it is the state legislatures that create gerrymandering - not the census. If anything, those determined to gerrymander need very precise information about where the folks live who "need" to be segregated into a geographical salamander. If gerrymandering is built on faulty information, it will be far less effective.