Trump’s 2020 Census May Cost California Congressional Seat by Counting Citizens

Democrats fear the Trump administration’s re-reinstatement of citizenship questions on the 2020 U.S. Census will cost California a Congressional seat and billions in funding.

The number of U.S. House of Representative seats was fixed by law in 1911 at 435. The “enumeration” requires at that each state have at least one Representative, and the other Representatives are allocated according to population as determined by the U.S. Census every ten years. Based on the 2010 Census data, California received the most, at 53.

But Politico reports that could change with the Department of Justice sending a letter on December 12 to the Census Bureau asking that the citizenship question eliminated in 2010 during the Obama administration be reinstated for the 2020 Census.

According to the Justice Department’s General Counsel, Arthur E. Gary, “This data is critical to the Department’s enforcement of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and its important protections against racial discrimination in voting.” He added, “To fully enforce those requirements, the Department needs a reliable calculation of the citizen voting-age population in localities where voting rights violations are alleged or suspected.”

The Obama administration discontinued the 1970-2000 “long form” questionnaire that asked citizenship questions. Democrats claim that it was appropriately replaced by the American Community Survey (ACS). But the Justice Department stresses that ACS is a “samples survey that is sent to only around one in every thirty-eight households each year.”...