Backers and opponents of a U-S Census question on citizenship are each confident their side will ultimately prevail, after the U-S Supreme Court ruled but didn’t make a final decision on President Trump’s initiative. State Demographer Susan Brower warns a citizenship question will likely discourage some from responding to the census. “What we need for our 2020 Census is a full and accurate count to make sure that we can have our political systems operating well, and the way that we distribute funding to be operating well,” Brower says. Those on the other side say non-citizens should not factor into how many U-S House members a state is allocated, or how much federal funding a state receives.
Republican Party of Minnesota Chair Jennifer Carnahan says the citizenship question has been asked before in the census and, given strict confidentiality of individual data, should not be controversial. But State Demographer Brower says, “It’s information that we already have on other surveys. We have really good estimates of citizenship at a fairly low level of geography.”