VOTER SUP­PORT CEN­SUS QUES­TION

The Washington Times Weekly - - Politics -

Should the 2020 cen­sus ask “Are you a U.S. cit­i­zen?” Demo­cratic crit­ics main­tain that the in­quiry would dis­cour­age mem­bers of the im­mi­grant com­mu­nity from vot­ing. Repub­li­cans say ci­ti­zen­ship sta­tus would con­tribute to a more ac­cu­rate count and re­al­is­tic pic­ture of the na­tion.

“The Amer­i­can peo­ple de­serve to know who is in this coun­try,” Pres­i­dent Trump noted in a re­cent tweet.

Three fed­eral courts al­ready have blocked the Com­merce De­part­ment — which over­sees the cen­sus — from adding the ques­tion. The Supreme Court will fig­ure the whole thing out next month. But what about Amer­i­cans them­selves? De­spite con­sid­er­able press cov­er­age which un­der­mines the idea of a ci­ti­zen­ship ques­tion, a siz­able num­ber of peo­ple ap­prove of the idea and they span all de­mo­graph­ics and age groups, ac­cord­ing to a new Hil­lHar­ris sur­vey of 1,002 reg­is­tered U.S. vot­ers.

“Six in 10 reg­is­tered vot­ers, 60%, said that the U.S. Cen­sus Bu­reau should ask the ci­ti­zen­ship ques­tion even if it re­sults in fewer re­sponses. An­other 21% said the ques­tion should not be in­cluded, while 19% were un­sure,” wrote Hill an­a­lyst Matthew Sh­effield.

“De­spite par­ti­san dif­fer­ences, a ma­jor­ity of vot­ers from all de­mo­graph­ics in­cluded in the sur­vey said they be­lieved the ci­ti­zen­ship ques­tion should be in­cluded. White vot­ers over­whelm­ingly sup­ported the ques­tion, with 65% in fa­vor and 17% op­posed. Black re­spon­dents fa­vored ask­ing about ci­ti­zen­ship by a 53-19% mar­gin. His­panic re­spon­dents sup­ported it, 53-28%,” Mr. Sh­effield said.

Also fa­vor­ing the idea: 81% of Repub­li­cans, 54% of in­de­pen­dents and half — 49% — of Democrats. In ad­di­tion, 67% of men and 54% of women also sup­port the ci­ti­zen­ship ques­tions — along with 66% of those over age 65, and 53% of those ages 18-34.

And P.S. — the cen­sus is a com­pli­cated event with in­ter­est­ing facts at­tached. For all things cen­sus, don’t for­get to check out Cen­sus.gov.

AS­SO­CI­ATED PRESS

Most reg­is­tered U.S. vot­ers say the ci­ti­zen­ship ques­tion should be in­cluded on the up­com­ing 2020 cen­sus.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from USA

© PressReader. All rights reserved.