Voting Rights: The Trump Administration’s Extraordinary Step To Protect Its Census Citizenship Question
The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to take up for review, before an appeals court has the chance to weigh in, a legal case challenging its census citizenship question. Should the Court agree, it would be an extraordinary step. Cases usually work their way from the district court to an appeals court before being appealed up to the Supreme Court, but the Trump administration, in both this and other proceedings, has aggressively sought Supreme Court interventions earlier in the process. In this case, the DOJ is arguing that the June deadline for printing the census forms makes an expedited SCOTUS review appropriate.
The Supreme Court previously had scheduled a hearing for next month on a discovery dispute in the case, but then removed that hearing from its schedule when the district court judge handed down a ruling, striking down the question, that did not depend on the disputed evidence.
Regardless of whether it takes up the dispute over the Census question, the Supreme Court stands to hear some other blockbuster voting rights cases this spring. The Court will hear two partisan gerrymandering legal challenges on March 26. It will also have a racial gerrymandering case from Virginia before it on March 18.
The Supreme Court, even though it is hearing the appeal of the Virginia case on the merits, has not put on hold the court-ordered process of redrawing the disputed districts in the state House of Delegates map. A panel of federal judges last week OKed a new map that would boost Democrats’ electoral prospects in the state.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed into law a package of voting rights legislation last week, as New York seeks to correct its reputation for having one of the most burdensome election regimes in the country — particularly among blue states.
Mark Harris, the Republican congressional candidate whose unofficial victory in North Carolina has become embroiled in a ballot fraud scandal, suffered a setback last week when a judge refused to certify his race. The allegations are being investigated by the state board of elections. The board itself is also in the midst of a makeover, after a court ruled last year that its make-up — created by the GOP legislature to undermine the Democratic governor’s powers — was illegal.
President Trump amplified shady claims from Texas officials that tens of thousands of noncitizens may have registered and even voted in the state. Trump falsely claimed on Twitter that 58,000 noncitizens had voted. In fact, that’s the number of voters that had been flagged as potential matches with people who submitted documents showing they weren’t citizens when obtaining a driver’s license. A match, in this case, means that a voter had a similar name to a non-citizen who applied for a drivers license. Texas’ methodology for running the matches is already drawing scrutiny, and other states that have made similar claims saw them shrink considerably under examination.