Democrats: Reject the Trump Census
(Salon) On election night 2020, there was a path — ultimately not taken — that could have made all the difference. The one that, in the months leading up to Nov. 3, excited all the Nates in ways only numbers can and was single-handedly able to recharge Steve Kornacki's battery pack with merely a thought.
That path was Joe Biden's narrowest route, a harrowing one that went through Wisconsin and Arizona and Nebraska's 2nd congressional district to exactly 270 electoral votes. You know, the map that might have broken our democracy, and the result you'd get if Rudy Giuliani could substitute his vote for all Pennsylvanians and if Lindsey Graham could personally do signature matching for all black Georgians.
That 270-268 victory might just have held up, through recounts, Brooks Brothers riots, legal challenges, state legislature shenanigans, suborning faithless electors and an invasion of the Capitol. But like our teetering democratic norms and institutions, it won't survive the next time. In the 2024 election, the 23 states plus D.C. and that one district around Omaha that currently get Democrats to 270 will no longer suffice. Our decennial reapportionment will foreclose it. Unless Democrats fight it — with this One Weird Trick.
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In that light, a refusal to transmit the census information by Johnson would not be out of line. She would have her pick of any number of justifications: The census is incomplete, and not have been delivered to her within a week of the new congressional session, as required; any count that excises unauthorized immigrants violates the Constitution; all states that engage in voter suppression need to have their population count reduced, in accordance with the 14th Amendment; the Commerce Department engaged in practices to suppress the count; the commerce secretary who supervised the count had previously, as vice president of the Bank of Cyprus, had exceedingly dubious business dealings with agents of the Russian government, whose interference in the 2016 election is a major reason he has that job. ..........(more)
https://www.salon.com/2021/01/10/democrats-can-save-themselves-with-this-one-weird-trick-reject-the-trump-census/
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