Keeping the census honest: Rep. Carolyn Maloney has the right bill to stop politicization of the count

Donald Trump and his secretary of commerce, Wilbur Ross, tried to inject politics into the U.S. Census Bureau for the 2020 decennial count of every person in America. They did it by seeking to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. But New York led 18 states in suing and won before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019, which blocked the Trump/Ross citizenship question.

That we know, but now Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s Committee on Oversight and Reform has found even more evidence and proof that it was all a political ploy, not rooted in any legitimate demographic reasoning. To prevent future such manipulation, Maloney has a bill on the House floor today to protect the integrity of the Census Bureau. We hope that the measure passes with large majorities of both parties.

After Chief Justice John Roberts and the high court stopped the citizenship question, Trump and Ross tried again in the summer of 2020, after the count was completed, with a memorandum instructing the Census Bureau to exclude undocumented immigrants from the apportionment process which divides up the 435 House seats among the states based on population gains and losses in the prior decade. Again, the federal courts stepped in and the clearly unconstitutional maneuver was abandoned.

Still, the sustained efforts targeting immigrants undoubtedly had the intended effect to dampen the participation rate of non-citizens, documented or not, which was Trump’s goal from the beginning.

Maloney’s bill protects the director of the Bureau of the Census from meddling by the secretary of commerce, an appointee and supporter of the president. Any new questions on the census forms must be submitted in advance to Congress and certified that they satisfy established statistical policies and procedures (not just because a president wants it). The Congress is also to receive a biannual report detailing preparations for the next big count.

We got lucky last time that the courts stopped Trump and Ross from trying to warp the census numbers. Next time we shouldn’t have to take that risk. Pass the Maloney bill.