New emails reveal a central political motivation for changing the census

When Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross instructed the Census Bureau earlier this year to include a question on the decennial census about the citizenship of residents, he offered a specific rationale. Having data on citizenship, he wrote, would allow the government to better enforce the Voting Rights Act, Civil-Rights-era legislation meant to protect voting from discriminatory policies.

This rationale was quickly treated with skepticism. The Trump administration has not in other significant ways championed the importance of Americans to vote or seemed particularly concerned about cracking down on efforts to limit voting. In fact, President Trump convened a commission meant to study the purported issue of voter fraud, an effort that in other places has been a precursor to new laws making voting more difficult, not easier. Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, even praised a 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted the rule.

So what was the rationale? Newly released emails from the Commerce Department offer an unsurprising answer.

By Philip Bump

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/12/new-emails-reveal-central-political-motivation-changing-census/?utm_term=.d5d76275ba2c