Kris Kobach: Democrats’ ‘Dirty Little Secret’ Is Excluding Citizenship Question on U.S. Census

During an interview with Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson that aired on Monday, Kansas Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach says the Democrats’ “dirty little secret” was the exclusion of the citizenship question on the United States Census.

Kobach explained how excluding the question asking U.S. residents if they are citizens has impacted on nationwide elections, congressional districts, and remains a provision Democrats are committed to fighting.

Partial transcript as follows:

KOBACH: Think of it this way. There are 710,000 people per representative in Congress. But if you live in a district like Maxine Waters’ district out in California, probably half or more of your district is illegal aliens. And so you may only have 350,000 citizens voting in your district. Those citizens’ votes count twice as much as my vote or your vote if you live in a district that doesn’t have tons of illegal aliens.

So you have vote dilution where some peoples’ vote matters more than others because they have tons of illegal aliens in their district.

KOBACH: Well, I think it’s a dirty little secret that they don’t really want to talk about. And you’re absolutely right, the 1964 decision of the Supreme Court, Westbury vs. Sanders says voting dilution is unconstitutional. You cannot have one congressional district where there are fewer voters than are another district and because of illegal immigration, we have crazy disproportional. Extraordinary numbers where in a midwestern seat you might have to get 120,000 votes to win your election, and in Waters’ district, you might only need 40,000 votes to win.

KOBACH: The only argument against [the citizenship question on the U.S. census] that I have heard is a really lame one. They say that people will be afraid to answer the census form if it has the citizenship question, which is ridiculous first of all. And secondly, we already ask the citizenship question on the American Communities Survey, which about one percent of the population gets and the Census Bureau asks that, it’s an ongoing survey. The Democrats never complained about that. Only when suddenly we talk about putting the citizenship question back on the census do the people on the Left start…

CARLSON: But why should we care if people who aren’t allowed to vote in our elections are afraid to answer a census which is designed to proportion congressional districts?

KOBACH: Well, there’s that too. If you’re illegally in this country, we shouldn’t be considering you a resident anyway because you could go home at any day, you could be deported any moment, so why in the world would we be worried about counting you.

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