Emails Show Trump Officials Consulted With GOP Strategist On Citizenship Question

Maj John Bell I wasn't on the 2010 census because as the article states it was replaced by the annual community survey that does indeed ask about citizenship. The government has this information already, at least as accurately as they are going to get it, census or not.

It hasn't been asked of the full census for a long time as the laws around immigration have changed drastically and along with it certain demographics relationship to the government in regards to immigration.

If goes back to the base philosophical question? Are we ok with overcounting some who should not be counted so we count all that should, or are we OK with not counting anyone we shouldn't at the expense of undercounting some of those we should.

For a very long time the long form was asked of only a portion of the citizens and could be argued that evened out the two interests. Then the Annual Community Survey came along and changed that. It appears that the ACS was one of those rare animals that was done more or less outside the realm of a lot of political considerations. Then politicians started realizing the representation implications and now we are mucking with the Census for political gain.

SPC Kevin Ford - Read my response again and you will see where I am coming from. If you want to distill that down to "personal skepticism" then you did not comprehend what I wrote very well.

1SG (Join to see) - the first part of your post does indeed boil down to personal skepticism. You don't believe that the addition of the question will impact the results. It's the same logic we hear when the police wonder why certain communities don't call them or serve as witnesses to them, etc. Why? They don't trust them or their motives.

That's a bit different than the voter id thing. Not all voter id laws are bad on their face, only ones designed to put enough hurdles in place where certain targeted communities are discouraged from voting, many times simply by playing with what ids are and are not accepted. When such laws are shot down by judicial review, that is usually the reason why. You personal skepticism that it is just because "they are trying to reach level 66 in Candy Crush Saga" isn't particularly compelling there either.

SPC Kevin Ford - What I am saying in plain language is that at issue here is concern that people won't fill out the forms due to a certain question being on it. I am submitting to you that they don't fill out the form because Americans would rather wile away their time messing around on their phones.
But that is OK, we have people for that. The Census Bureau hires oodles of canvassers to go door to door.
My supposition is that they have a sense from the annual community surveys that certain questions are met with resistance from certain quarters when the face-to-face happens.
Except this time the stakes are bigger, because we're talking about House Apportionment, corresponding Electoral College votes, and how much federal money is allocated to a given jurisdiction. If you are an entity such as LA County with a crap-ton of illegal residents who are unlikely to fill out government forms period, you view this as a clear and present danger to your federal revenue streams and fight vigorously in court.

Personally, I find the practice of farming illegals and indigent populations in order to secure funding repugnant.
As you say, motives matter.