I laid out this issue in a thread two days ago, but this article presents it more systematically, with links!https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1211881670590095360 …
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But basically.... Progressives argued that the census citizenship question would dramatically reduce census response rates. The settled-on number was 2.2%. The real value was 0.5%, and even that was statistically insignificant.
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And even that is not a true measure of undercount. If we suppose that Census in-person follow up efforts would normally count 95% of missed people, but that this change would leave most of that unaffected, but followups would count just 50% of that 0.5%...
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Then the total undercount estimate changes from 1.44% to 1.69%. Folks, that's not gonna change a lot of apportionments. I dunno if it would change *any* apportionments.
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Its cost impact would likewise be very small in terms of number of additional followups required.
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Finally, SCOTUS rejected the entire idea that a potential undercount would violate the enumeration clause of the Constitution.
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So on both the pure empirical nonresponse issue, its connection to the final undercount, its impact on apportionment, and the constitutionality of claims related to lost apportionment.... Progressives were wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong.
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But progressives made another argument! They said the question was unconstitutional because it represented racial animus. I'm not gonna lie, I found that argument to be fairly plausible. Hard to prove definitively, but tenable.
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The wild thing though is that the district courts ended up ordering just huge amounts of document discovery (according to SCOTUS, more than was required), and in that discovery, we get an extremely full and detailed accounting of motives!
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The administration's motive is now super clear. They were NOT trying to reduce Hispanic responses to reduce blue-state apportionments. They were trying to create the data needed to enable districting based on the citizen voting-age population.
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Like folks we have the emails where they basically say this straight out. Now in principle, this isn't an unconstitutional motivation. But... it is an odd one. CVAP districting is AT BEST a constitutional gray area.
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So what we can say is Ross wanted the question in order to facilitate states enacting a constitutionally dubious policy which would definitely be challenged by SCOTUS and maybe fail.
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Now maybe the desire for CVAP districting is motivated by racial animus. But now we're just asking how many turtles are under the world. What we can say is the direct motivation was a desire for CVAP districting, not just racial animus.
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It is rare (and SCOTUS took pains to note how unusual it is) that we get SUCH DETAILED accounting for administrative motivation. But in this case, we have it. And it wasn't racial animus. Progressives... wrong again.
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BUUUUUUT.... Here's where progressives get the one point they need to win the issue. The REAL motivation LONG predated Ross' public statements about the question, and completely contradicted his statements. He lied. Repeatedly, in public, to Congress and the courts.
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The thing is, it's a long-established norm (and actual law) that in a functional republic, policymakers have to give real reasons for their policies. You have to give the public an actual accounting for your decisions.
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If you give NO accounting then that's not great but sometimes you can skate by. But if you give a FALSE accounting, and when challenged you heap more falsehoods on that and lie in court.... Well then you're screwed.
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ANd that is what the administration did. Time and time again on this issue, they lied, and failed to disclose incriminating documents they were bound to disclose.
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It just blows my mind that they tried this. Aside from the obvious ethics red flag, it's just dumb. It was going to come out! One of the biggest rules bureaucrats get drilled into their (our) heads is DON'T LIE TO CONGRESS.
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You get caught, and when you get caught, your career is over.
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This isn't Secretary Ross' only problem. The dude has been caught lying now in a ton of different cases. He also has some pretty dodgy financial stuff going on.
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So progressives were wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong.... but they were right on the key argument that the administration's move to include the citizenship question was illegal.
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But the wider point this article is making isn't about citizenship. It's about competence. Conservatives have a deficit of administrative competence, an issue I have flagged before.https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/13/make-america-great-right-needs-learn-run-bureaucracies/ …
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We are bad at preparing young conservatives for actual government leadership roles, and bad at retaining conservative talent within government when we get it. And when it comes time for executive hires, we systematically discriminate against competence.
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That is, conservatives who have made the tactical compromises necessary to survive in the administrative state are seen as too compromised to lead: when in fact they're often the only people capable of achieving conservative goals in those systems.
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The problem here is conservative leaders have also been enagaged in some deception; or some doublethink. We keep saying "the bureaucracy is hopelessly politicized" but then act like we can put a random person in charge and expect the bureaucracy to obey them non-politically.
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IF you believe the conservative claims about the "swamp" and the hopelessly politicized Federal bureaucracy.... THEN you desperately need to be putting extremely bureaucratically competent people in high positions, and training new conservative bureaucrats!
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But in practice the conservative movement says the bureaucracy is politicized and then does procisely squat to the address the problem.
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This can be contrasted with the judiciary, where conservatives used to say judges were hopelessly progressive... and then we made big investments to train up a new wave of judges and position them for leadership, and now we've captured much of the judiciary!
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If the conservative movement makes an effort to capture the bureaucracy, it is in fact possible. We can make it so that progressive policies face an ocean of slow-walking and raised eyebrows from the implementers, as conservative policies do now.
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