That is the title of this report out January 2nd, 2018 by Ari Berman, voting rights activist and author of several books and many articles toward that goal.
This report by Ari Berman is a few days old, and many of the links go back a few months, but since there are few headlines covering this and stories like it, it seemed like a good idea to keep hammering on it.
Ari Berman’s report begins here:
In June 2011, the North Carolina Legislature hired Thomas Brunell, a professor of political science at the University of Texas at Dallas, to produce a report that would help defend the state’s new redistricting maps.
The maps, approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature, concentrated black voters, who tended to vote Democratic, into as few districts as possible in order to maximize the number of safe Republican districts.
In an earlier report by Abigail Tracy @ Vanity Fair, Trump’s pick (actually the Federalist Society's pick: According to The Federalist, this would be a feather in his cap) has described Thomas Brunell's "research" as:
..frequently been used by the G.O.P. to defend gerrymandering.
The Trump administration declined to nominate Brunell to the top director post at the bureau earlier this year, which would have required Senate confirmation.
But the deputy job wouldn’t require Congress’s weigh-in.
“This is worse than making him director,”
a former high-ranking official at the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, told Politico,
This Brunell character is a regular gun for hire all over the country..
He has testified on behalf of numerous Republican efforts to gerrymander political districts
..yet has zero qualifications to run the census:
Trump’s apparent choice for the top operational role in the Census Bureau, however, has no background in civil service, has never run any organization and is an openly partisan registered Republican.
Back to Ari Berman’s report:
When the maps were challenged in court, state Republicans paid Brunell $300 an hour for research and $500 an hour for testimony as an expert witness.
Brunell wrote a book tilted:
Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections Are Bad for America.
Brunell argued that clustering black voters into a few districts was necessary to maintain their political influence.
Yes, Brunnell is defending “packing & cracking” gerrymandering as if it helps AA voters.
Brunell’s work as heard by the courts:
.. in 2017, federal courts struck down two of North Carolina’s congressional districts and 28 state legislative districts, calling the state maps
“among the largest racial gerrymanders ever encountered by a federal court.”
A unanimous three-judge court in North Carolina said Brunell’s
“generalized conclusions regarding racially polarized voting”
demonstrated a
“misunderstanding” of the Voting Rights Act and “fail to demonstrate a strong basis in evidence justifying the challenged districts as drawn.”
According to multiple reports, Brunell will be appointed deputy director of the US Census Bureau and de facto leader of the 2020 census, which is constitutionally mandated to count every person in America.
• So the GOP is doing an end run around senate confirmation to put this racist asshole in charge of the 2020 census operations
• The Trump/GOP plans slash budgets to underfund the census.
• The republicans also have sought to count only eligible voters, instead of counting the actual population of the people during redistricting
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Underfunding will worsen this:
The 2010 census failed to count 2.1 percent of African Americans, 1.5 percent of Hispanics, and 4.9 percent of Native Americans living on reservations, while overcounting whites by nearly 1 percent.
These errors gave Republican areas more power, representation, and resources than they deserved, and gave Democratic ones less.
In California, for example, the census failed to count 1.5 million residents, costing the state $1.7 billion in annual federal funding and depriving it of at least one congressional district
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Ari Berman (the whole article is loaded with information with links to more, and well worth reading — imo):
The deputy director of the Census Bureau has historically been a nonpartisan career civil servant.
Brunell, a registered Republican, has no prior government experience and a deeply partisan background.
People are resisting
The appointment of Brunell, Terri Ann Lowenthal, former co-director of the Census Project, told Politico, “signals an effort by the administration to politicize the census,” adding: “It’s very troubling.”
The bureau’s funding has been cut dramatically. Dress rehearsals scheduled for this year to prepare for 2020 were canceled in Puerto Rico and on Native American reservations in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Washington because of a lack of funds.
Democrats in Congress have also raised concerns about Brunell’s appointment. (The deputy director position does not require Senate confirmation.)
“Dr. Brunell has neither the managerial experience nor the non-partisan reputation to fill this position,”
Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) wrote to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on December 21. (The Census Bureau is part of the Commerce Department.)
“The appointment of Dr. Brunell would be a significant departure from past practices and would further undermine the Census Bureau’s efforts to increase public trust in the Census.
“It would also raise questions about the Administration’s intent to comply with the constitutionally mandated requirement to complete an accurate count of the U.S. population.”
Despite fraudulent claims made by republican politicians; this is the real voter fraud these crooks are Hell bent on making a reality — again — Chris Jankowsi’s RedMap bought and paid for by billionaire donors did its number on the 2010 elections:
The Rachel Maddow Show 3/2/15
Chris Jankowski former president of the Republican State Leadership Committee, talks with Rachel Maddow about the Republican implementation of "Project RedMap" to win state legislatures for greater control of redistricting in 2010.
Looks like it is up to all of us to keep this numbers like this handy: (202)224-3121 — let our senators and representatives know this deliberate degradation of democracy will not go without a fight — Resist :)
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