The Census and Voter Suppression: The 2020 Immigration Question
The first post in this series on the census covered “prison gerrymandering.” This post covers part of the controversial attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.
Background
From 1820 through to 1950, with an exception for 1840, the census contained a citizenship question. During this time period, the census collected data through in-person interviews. After 1950 the census transition to collecting data through a mailed questionnaire. A short-form questionnaire was mailed to most residences while the remaining residences received a long-form questionnaire. The long-form census questionnaire used in 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 included a question about citizenship.… Read the rest
Trump’s Rhetorical Power
I found a recent paper by Timothy Haverda and Jeffery Halley (H&H) helpful in trying to understand Trump’s nomination and election. More implicitly, it may also help understand Trump’s base of support.
H&H base their paper on Theodor Adorno’s (1903 – 1969) analysis of a 1930s preacher in California, Martin Luther Thomas.* Based on Thomas’ radio addresses, Adorno identified 33 rhetorical devices that characterized Thomas’s speeches. The paper uses three of these devices (1) lone wolf, (2) movement, and (3) exactitude of error to analyze 16 Trump speeches. The speeches cover June 16, 2015 (Trump’s presidential announcement speech) to January 2017 (Trump’s Inaugural Address).… Read the rest
The Census, Hard-to-Count Populations, and Voter Suppression?
The first census post discussed what is called “prison gerrymandering.” This post focuses on the census’s differential undercount. The term “differential undercount” refers to the long-standing bias in the decennial census that undercounts what are called hard-to-count populations (HTC). I discuss this now before returning to the 2020 Census and the citizenship question because this next post continues the HTC discussion.
Danahy and Lang start with the premise that the census count is a voting rights issue. Voting rights can be understood in several distinct ways. One can consider voting as participation, which is the right to cast a ballot that is counted.… Read the rest
The Supreme Court and the 2020 Census (1 of 3)
The Supreme Court’s decision on the 2020 Census and the citizenship question illustrates the deep and partisan divide on the Court. This first of two posts on the Supreme Court and the 2020 Census focuses solely on the justices’ opinions from both the conservative and liberal justices. It does so primarily by providing excerpts that contain the key points in the majority and dissenting opinions. The next post will deal with two earlier Court decisions on the census that illustrate the poltical nature of the census. .
Background
The Supreme Court reviewed the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York’s decision on the citizenship question.… Read the rest
The Supreme Court and the Census (2 of 3)
As noted by Nathaniel Persily, “In the Constitution itself, the census is ‘about’ representation, money, and race, so we should not be surprised to learn that courtroom controversies over the census have persisted with respect to these three themes.” For a brief review of the history of census litigation and controversy see Swanson and Walashek. This post covers two recent Supreme Court cases that illustrate the political significance of the decennial census.
Context
A significant issue in court cases deals with how the census should count. The issue of how to count derives in part from the Census Bureau’s post-census estimation of the accuracy of the decennial enumeration.… Read the rest
The 2016 Election through a Leadership Theory Lens
Donna Ladkin, an American citizen, currently teaches at the Graduate School of Management at Plymouth University in Plymouth, United Kingdom. I find her leadership theory, perhaps best described as a framework for analyzing leadership, very useful. She is one of my favorite leadership scholars because of the way her “leadership moment” sees leadership. This post focuses on a recently published article entitled “How did that happen? Making sense of the 2016 US presidential election through the lens of the ‘leadership moment.'”
The leadership moment framework
Ladkin sees leadership as a dynamic and lived experience, not a set of traits or behavior.… Read the rest
The Supreme Court, Census Citizenship Question, and Voter Suppression
This last post in a series of posts on the census divides into two parts. This post, Part A, focuses on the key points made by the majority and minority opinions on the census and citizenship question. The excerpts from the Court’s opinions provide the basis for the next, part B. Part B examines the contexts of the Constitution’s Enumeration Clause opinions and the Administrative Procedure Act opinions of the justices. It ends with commentary on these two issues, connecting them to voter suppression. Voter suppression is the main theme running through this series of posts on the census.
Part A
The Supreme Court’s decision on the 2020 Census illustrates the deep and partisan divide on the Court.… Read the rest
Supreme Court and the 2020 census citizenship question – Part B-1
t B-1
Part B-1 of this post discusses one of two key decision points in the Supreme Court’s decision on the citizenship question in the 2020 census, the Constitution’s Enumeration clause. Part B-2 will cover the second decision point, the Administrative Procedure Act. Part A covered the Court’s opinions on both these points.
Enumeration Clause
The history of the census – citizenship nexus
My lay opinion says that the New York District Court and the Supreme Court probably erred in finding that the Enumeration Clause was not relevant to the 2020 Census citizenship question issue. As highlighted below, I say this for two reasons.… Read the rest
The Supreme Court and the 2020 Census Citizenship Question: Part B-2
This final post in the series on the census analyzes the Court’s opinion regarding the capricious and arbitrary standard of the Administrative Procedure Act. It also discusses the possible real rationale behind the administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
The Administrative Procedure Act
The Administrative Procedure Act established procedures for federal agency formal and informal rulemaking. The Act defines a rule expansively to include any “agency statement of general or particular applicability and future effect designed to implement, interpret, or prescribe law or policy or describing the organization, procedure, or practice requirements of an agency.” The history of the act suggests that matters of great significance should be accorded more elaborate public procedures.… Read the rest
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