Giving Compass' Take:

• Steven Martin and Charmaine Runes discuss how the Census citizenship question could affect congressional representation through both apportionment and gerrymandering. 

• How can funders work to ensure accurate representation for all communities? How can the Census in 2020 be made most accurate?

• Learn more about the problems associated with the census citizenship question. 

Documents in a federal court filing revealed that former political consultant to the Republican party and top gerrymandering expert Thomas B. Hofeller played a critical role in the attempt to include a question on citizenship status in the 2020 Census. The contested questionwould ask all persons living in the United States to indicate whether they are a US citizen.

The US Department of Commerce’s official argument for the citizenship question is that it would improve enforcement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and result in fairer elections. Some policymakers have said that even if the citizenship question lowers census response rates among Hispanic and Latinx people (an effect we explore in our interactive feature), the benefits to voting rights outweigh those concerns (PDF).

Assessing the possible voting rights benefits of a citizenship question is difficult because the US Department of Justice does not appear to be using citizenship data to support voting rights. But we can explore the political effects of the census citizenship question related to other potential factors.

Apportionment

There is disagreement over whether congressional apportionment should be based on the number of citizens or total population. At the national level, the Constitution mandates that the allocation of districts to states be based on the total population. But some courts have indicated that a state can base its internal redistrictingon the citizen population instead of the total population only if high-quality citizenship data are available. If a citizenship question is in the census, that would likely enable states to use citizen counts for their internal redistricting.

Gerrymandering

Congressional districts are often designed with partisan motivations, a process called gerrymandering. Gerrymandered districts allow one political party to win more districts than it would if districts were based solely on the proportion of the votes received by that party. The basic technique in gerrymandering—which both Republicans and Democrats have used—is to draw many districts for the favored party to win by a slim margin and a few districts for the opposing party to win by a landslide. Citizen-based reapportionment can be a useful tool (PDF) for concentrating opposition voters into even fewer districts.

Read the full article about congressional representation by Steven Martin and Charmaine Runes at Urban Institute.