The announcement of the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census questionnaire has launched calls for lawsuits, legislation and now multiple congressional hearings. In a letter written to the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which has oversight of the U.S. Census Bureau, four Democratic senators are calling for a hearing on the upcoming national headcount.
Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Tom Carper of Delaware, Gary Peters of Michigan and Claire McCaskill of Missouri — the committee's ranking member — are requesting testimony from Census Bureau staff and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the bureau and made the decision to add the citizenship question. They cite deep concerns about the question as well as the lack of permanent leadership at the bureau and the operational challenges of carrying out the 2020 census.
"Together, these problems risk a substantial undercount of persons in the 2020 Census with wide ranging implications for proportional representation in Congress, state government share of federal dollars, the accuracy of information businesses use to decide where to locate, the availability of affordable broadband service, and natural disaster funding," the senators write in the letter, which was provided to NPR by Harris' office.
"We are concerned that the addition of the citizenship question is tainted by improper political considerations," the letter continues. "DOJ requested the addition of this question in December 2017 based on an unsupported assertion that citizenship data are needed to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act even though the last time a citizenship question was asked was before the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and no similar requests have been made to support enforcement."
On the House side, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., issued a call on Tuesday for a similar hearing on the citizenship question by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, for which he serves as the ranking member.