Census Question on Citizenship Shows, Again, That Republicans Will Rig the System to Grab Power

[dajoki]

Census Question on Citizenship Shows, Again, That Republicans Will Rig the System to Grab Power
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/84524

You know how when you stumble upon certain movies, you just can’t help yourself and end up watching to the end—no matter how many times you’ve seen them before? Wednesday night that happened to me as I was channel surfing (note: that’s something done by people who haven’t yet cut the cord. It means you actually limit yourself to watching what other people have scheduled for you at a given time). Anyway, I stumbled onto Groundhog Day, and settled in for a not that long but definitely lustrous final 30 minutes.

Somewhat less pleasant, however, is realizing that our politics are very much like that movie. We see the same scenarios being replayed over and over when it comes to Republicans abusing the system and pushing the rules and boundaries beyond recognition in order to grab, hold, and enhance their power while Democrats, for the most part, eschew such methods out of greater respect for those same rules and that same system. This has gone on so long that it feels like even using the Groundhog Day metaphor to talk about politics feels like something out of Groundhog Day—something we’ve done over and over. We’re caught in a loop inside another loop: a meta loop-de-loop, if you will.

This is where we stand right now with the Supreme Court apparently on the verge of rubber-stamping yet another Trump administration outrage—namely, the attempt to add a question about citizenship to the U.S. census for the first time since 1950. Despite the White House’s flimsy claims that they are doing so in order to aid enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, in actuality this represents a blatant attempt to increase Republican numbers in state and federal legislatures by suppressing responses from all immigrants. That includes documented immigrants who are eligible to vote or soon will be, communities that deliver a majority of their votes to Democrats. Daily Kos’ own elections expert Stephen Wolf noted that a Trump victory at the Supreme Court in this matter ...

… could have profoundly disastrous effects for democracy and fair political representation … [E]xperts fear that the question would have a chilling effect that intimidates millions of people in immigrant communities into not participating. That could in turn turbocharge a new wave of hyperpartisan Republican gerrymandering nationwide, since the census is the bedrock foundation of redistricting.

<<snip>>

Trump’s attempt to use the census as a political weapon is just the most recent example of what his party has done time and time again, in particular since the 1990s. Republicans understand how to use whatever level of power they hold at present to change the rules of the game in order to have more power going forward. There are no principles involved here other than the naked pursuit of power for its own sake. What Republicans are doing undermines and could potentially destroy our democracy by thwarting the ability of the people to have the representation they should have based on their own voting preferences. It represents an electoral theft as surely as does stuffing a ballot box.

That’s why, if Democrats do win in 2020, they must not only implement their policy agenda, but drastically reform the rules of our elections to ensure fair and full representation, to guarantee the right to vote for all eligible voters, and to take measures to increase, not reduce, voter participation rates. And they should definitely implement the aforementioned plan for D.C. statehood. Democrats have to live up to their party’s name, and fight for our democracy. Its legitimacy is at stake.

[uponit7771]

1. The KGOP has no message, their cheating has to be stopped