Maine Attorney General Janet Mills has signed onto a letter opposing the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. Census.
Mills, a Democrat, joined 18 other attorneys general and one governor in writing to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. The Justice Department in December requested the addition of the question to the next census form, arguing citizenship data would help prevent racial discrimination in voting.
The letter, dated Monday, warned that the question would be unconstitutional. It also said the question would result in an inaccurate count because immigrants would be more reluctant to participate in the census.
Asking about citizenship status would “significantly depress participation, causing a population undercount that would disproportionately harm states and cities with large immigrant communities,” the letter said.
“This undercount would frustrate the Census Bureau’s obligation under the Constitution to determine ‘the whole number of persons in each state,’ threaten our states’ fair representation in Congress, dilute our states’ role in the Electoral College, and deprive our states of their fair share of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funds that are allocated in part on decennial Census data.”
The Census Bureau must submit its final questionnaire to Congress by March 31.
The national census forms have not included a question about citizenship or country of birth since 1950, according to The Washington Post. However, a similar question has been included since 2000 on a smaller survey called the American Community Survey, which is sponsored by the Census Bureau.
All of the signers are Democrats or independents. In addition to Mills, they were the attorneys general from California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. The governor of Colorado also added his name.
Mills is among the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for governor in Maine’s November election.
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