Wilbur Ross Jr., secretary of commerce, who says that the citizenship question will help to enforce the Voting Rights Act. (Photo by Erin Schaff of the New York Times)
Wilbur Ross Jr., secretary of commerce, who says that the citizenship question will help to enforce the Voting Rights Act. (Photo by Erin Schaff of the New York Times)

Tuesday, March 27th, several states backed the idea of preventing the Trump Administration from adding a new question to the 2020 US Census: “Are you a United States Citizen?” officials from New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington, and California have all shown support regarding a lawsuit against the Administration and the citizenship question.

These states argue that the census is supposed to include all people living in the United States in order to properly set state/city funding and that adding this question would be a violation of the United States Constitution. The concern lies in the fact that “the Constitution requires every resident of the United States to be counted in a decennial census, whether or not they are citizens,”[1] (Wines, Baumgaertner, New York Times). If the population is inaccurately counted then district boundaries will be redrawn, house seats shifted, and reallocation of funding in areas where they are essential. Critics also believe that the addition of a citizenship question would lead to a decrease in the response rate from noncitizens and immigrants. Parties opposing the census question are also concerned that the Republican Trump Administration is trying to secure power by reducing population count in areas on the US are commonly Democratic.

On the other hand, the Trump Administration claims that this new appendage to the census is necessary to enforce the Voting Rights Act as it is reliant on the amount of the population eligible to vote. By this they mean to protect the rights of voters by determining how much of the population is actually comprised of those eligible and allow for accurate seating in the house.

The Citizenship question had been present in every census since 1965 up until the previous on in 2010, when it was removed. Not only that, but citizenship-type questions have been included in censuses since 1850 so the Trump Administration argues that they are just returning the census to a previous state in order to achieve more accurate data.

Knowing all of the facts, it is really up to present and future generations to create a fair and balanced census that will accurately include the population of the United States while still maintaining protection of US voters. One Timber Creek High School student, sophomore Owen Ruyter, comments that, “the new question poses a qualification that many people in this country don’t have.” Ruyter claims that the citizenship question shouldn’t be included and that just because an illegal immigrant is not a true citizen, “that doesn’t mean they don’t work hard and do all of the things other US citizens do.”

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/us/census-citizenship-question.html  Michael Wines, Emily Baumgartner. Paragraph 4. New York Times Newspaper