[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 108 (Wednesday, June 26, 2019)]
[House]
[Page H5172]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      CENSUS RIGGING: A CONFESSION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney) for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. CAROLYN B. MALONEY of New York. Mr. Speaker, the clock is 
ticking down to the hour when the Supreme Court will make its initial 
decision on whether to include a citizenship question in the 2020 
Census.
  This administration has repeatedly told the American people, this 
Congress, and the Supreme Court that its reason for wanting to include 
the question is to ``help enforce the Voting Rights Act.''
  It turns out, all that was a lie, and I have the documentation to 
prove it on my website.
  Newly discovered documents and court records clearly show that the 
only goal was to achieve the desired effect of diminishing the 
representation of communities of color while also entrenching the power 
of ``Republican and non-Hispanic Whites,'' according to the masterminds 
of the citizenship question.
  This may, understandably, sound to some like an outrageous claim to 
make, but we have the documentation to prove it. You can go to my 
website to see it. These documents were uncovered thanks to the 
courageous efforts of a woman who discovered and turned over thousands 
of documents from her father's hard drive to pro bono lawyers 
representing Common Cause in its litigation against gerrymandering.
  In doing so, she uncovered evidence that is more powerful and 
convincing than a smoking gun. It is basically a signed and sealed 
confession.
  The documentary trail of deceit begins on January 7, 2015, when a 
Census Bureau employee used her private email account to contact a 
Republican redistricting expert and urged him to push for a citizenship 
question in the 2020 Census.

                              {time}  1015

  The Census Bureau employee, a Christa Jones, went on to become a 
political appointee in the Census Bureau. Ms. Jones then became part of 
Secretary Ross' core team on the citizenship question.
  The redistricting expert she reached out to was Dr. Thomas Hofeller. 
Hofeller was widely known as the Michelangelo of gerrymandering for the 
Republican Party.
  This conspiracy picked up steam in August of 2015 when Dr. Hofeller 
concluded in a secret study he had written that simply adding one 
question, a citizenship question, to the Census would facilitate a 
redistricting overhaul that would be, and I quote from his work: 
``advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic Whites.''
  In late 2016, Dr. Hofeller became the first person to push the 
incoming administration to add a citizenship question to the 2020 
census. Not long after, Hofeller ghostwrote a letter that became, word 
for word, the basis of the Justice letter that had been cooked up by 
Commerce to be sent to them that set forth the knowingly fake voting 
rights rationale.
  In October of 2017, Secretary Ross' general counsel arranged for his 
key Census advisor to hand-deliver the Hofeller letter to a top 
Department of Justice political appointee at a secret meeting. That 
fake Voting Rights Act rationale then appeared in the letter that the 
DOJ political appointee sent to the Commerce Department, and the U.S. 
Secretary of Commerce sat before Congress and lied to our faces in an 
effort to cover up their illegal and immoral activities.
  Let no one be misled about the purpose of these efforts. They are a 
concerted effort by the current administration to undermine the bedrock 
principle of one person, one vote. Its purpose is to undermine the 
ability of non-White, non-Republican people and communities of color to 
have equal representation here in the people's House.
  These deceptive and anti-democratic efforts must not stand. Even if 
the Supreme Court rules against us, we will continue to fight for the 
principles of one person, one vote and the Constitution's requirement 
that all inhabitants must be counted. Democracy depends on it, our 
people deserve it, and we will fight until we achieve it.

                          ____________________