EXCLUSIVE – Jeff Landry: Accurate Census Protects Our Republic

Attorney General Jeff Landry
Louisiana Dept. of Justice





Furthermore, the reinstatement restores the rule of law. The Supreme Court has held that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits “vote dilution” by state and local jurisdictions engaged in redistricting, which can occur when a racial group is improperly deprived of a single-member district in which it could form a majority. Multiple federal courts of appeals have held that, where citizenship rates are at issue in a vote-dilution case, citizen voting-age population is the proper metric for determining whether a racial group could constitute a majority in a single-member district.

This more accurate decennial census could prevent the inevitable dilution of votes and the further exposure of states to endless litigation as courts have reasoned that “the right to vote is one of the badges of citizenship” and that “the dignity and very concept of citizenship are diluted if noncitizens are allowed to vote.” Thus, it would be the wrong result for a legislature or a court to draw a single-member district in which a numerical racial minority group in a jurisdiction was a majority of the total voting-age population in that district but “continued to be defeated at the polls” because it was not a majority of the citizen voting-age population.

When the right of all citizens to cast a properly weighted vote is not protected, there is a resulting dilution of the voting power of citizens residing in districts that are home to a smaller number of nonvoting residents. Moreover, it incentivizes sanctuary cities by granting an electoral advantage at the expense of non-sanctuary cities.

Voting is one of the most precious rights of citizenship. I am grateful the Trump Administration is working to protect it.

Jeff Landry is the elected attorney general of Louisiana and a former U.S. representative.