If they pull that sort of nonsense, the SC might order the Bureau not to summarize that item. Roberts will probably tell us that by not summarizing it, the harm is mitigated.
Unfortunately, the harm will have already occurred in the form of the differential non-response, lowering the count of POCs.
It’s just like Roberts to try to have the GOP cake and eat it too.
The Census bureau employees won’t want to go through with adding the question if the courts won’t allow it, but Ross may be able to force it through if he finds the right employees (or fires the ones standing in his way) who implement it. That’s about the only way to push it through if they decide to defy the courts; I wouldn’t put it past them to go for it and figure they can ignore the consequences.
The thing is, those consequences may be larger than we think. First, ignoring the courts is essentially breaking the law, and the media will be all over that story. The House will open investigations, and it may be the issue that pushes impeachment onto the table, as ignoring the SC and court decisions to affect the outcome of the Census is blatantly corrupt. And, it will be in the middle of the primary season, so the Democrats will have a lot of media attention and can really make noise, including saying that if the question is forced through people should ignore/not answer it, they won’t be penalized if the Democrat wins, and the question results will be trashed. And, that they should answer every other Census question, and make sure to answer it, in defiance of what Republicans want.
Take all of that together, and it really could be a powerful message that drives up anger at Republicans in general, and drives down the willingness for middle of the road voters to support such a blatant amount of cheating and lawbreaking. Republicans are trying to be the party of election integrity through all of their “illegal voters” nonsense, undercutting their message this way really should hurt them. It should hurt them now, but most people likely aren’t paying attention enough…later they can be. And, it would serve them right to have their cheating turn into a huge electoral rout in 2020 and get them kicked out of power all over the nation.
Remember when Trump said he thought the Census was a waste of time and too expensive, until someone pointed out that it was mandated in the Constitution? If the citizenship question is eliminated, the Trump Administration will make sure the Census rollout is a complete disaster just to be spiteful. State governments and NGOs will step in to make sure the count is as accurate as possible for their constituencies, but it’ll still be a mess.
The estimates I have seen for the non-shows on the census if the citizenship question is put on is 5 to 6 million. I wonder how many of those 6 million would not fill out the form even if the question was not on it. A lot of them are concerned about the ways in which the Feds will use the census information, such as in roundups of illegal immigrants. I doubt many illegals will fill out the form regardless of whether the question is there or not.
Also, in an earlier post, someone looked up the laws regarding the census and found that there is a $100 fine for not filing one out or not filling it out completely and that they will come to your residence 6 times to “encourage” you to fill it out. How will this work for illegals? They have probably been careful to keep their presence secret to avoid ICE and they will probably “bug out” if someone from a federal agency comes around asking questions. I don’t think that census workers are bad guys and they have a difficult job to do but there have to be better ways to get an accurate count, regardless of the citizenship question.
It’s a little ironic that last time around it was all the loony right spreading fear about the census and telling people to attack census workers. They really just don’t understand the idea of not cheating.
Historically, the undercount in the US Census is in the neighborhood of 2%. Sometimes it’s estimated to be a touch lower (1.8 or 1.9%), sometimes a bit higher (2.5% or so). For back-of-the-envelope calculations 2% is convenient. That would put the 2020 undercount in the neighborhood of 5 to 6 million.
The estimates that I saw for the effect on the undercount was that it would double: 4- 5% overall. This would make the 5 to 6 million figure an addition to the usual undercount.
Counting illegal resident is tough. Counting the homeless is tough. Doing a census of a nation of 330+ million people is one of those things that sounds easy but is really, really hard to do. With that said, there are better ways to get an accurate count, but the GOP won’t let the Bureau use them. Why? Because it would count more of those people. Look at the history leading up to the 2010 Census. The Bureau wanted to institute a variation on mark-recapture methods to estimate state populations. The GOP in Congress had an absolute hissy fit.
John Tukey (a hero among statisticians) once said, “It’s better to have an approximate answer to the right question than the right answer to the wrong question.” Congress is forcing the Bureau to get an answer (not even the right answer) to the wrong question: “How many people can you count in this geographic division of the USA?”
The right question is, “How many people live in this geographic division of the USA?”
And Ross will get redeposed as part of the 10 weeks of discovery that the judge is threatening will start if the government doesn’t fold. You could sell tickets to that one.