Who counts?
Donald Trump and his allies want to reshape America by deciding which voters matter -- and whether they deserve representation at all
Today, Monday, August 11, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we’ll talk about the expanding battle over redistricting with Texas State Representative James Talarico, and about the Trump administration’s war on labor with American Federation of Government Employees president Everett Kelley. Watch on desktop at The Ink or join from a phone or tablet with the Substack app. To ask questions or comment, become a supporting subscriber today.
There’s a saying — the provenance is unclear, but it’s usually misattributed to Joseph Stalin, or to 19th-century New York political machine chieftain William “Boss” Tweed — that goes, loosely, “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”
That idea is still with us, and concerns about what happens if election officials sabotage the will of the people by interfering with the vote count persist to this day, for good reason.
As Chris Lehmann wrote in The Nation back in 2022, one needs only look back to the contested 2000 presidential election, the “Brooks Brothers Riot,” and the Supreme Court decision that ultimately gave the presidency to George W. Bush to see how such actions may have shaped American elections since the turn of the millennium (and set the stage for the kind of power politics we see today).
“The closed loop of raw power here is extraordinary,” says Roosevelt University political scientist David Faris. “You have Barrett, Roberts and Kavanaugh on Bush’s legal team, who help convince the Supreme Court to issue a party-line 5-4 vote to stop counting votes in Florida. With Bush installed, Roberts eventually becomes chief justice, guts voting rights and campaign finance laws, allows Republicans to continue gerrymandering, cuts the heart out of unions and subjects the ACA to endless legal Calvinball.” At the core of this judicial revolution, Faris continues, was the logic of the electoral putsch, as test-driven in Miami: “With the Brooks Brothers riot, Republicans got their first taste of intimidating election officials, gaming the courts and playing the outrage card to tilt the scales in their favor.”
But why wait to interfere with the vote?
The latest moves by Donald Trump and the Republican Party suggest that those interested in getting the outcome they want, regardless of what the people want, are looking to put a thumb on the scale of future elections by deciding whose votes matter — and whose don’t. That’s what’s behind the redistricting battle unfolding in the states — and it helps explain Trump’s curious call last week for a new census that would not count “People who are in our country illegally.”
There are a couple of important issues at play: First, the next census isn’t set to take place until 2030, and while it is theoretically possible for Congress to authorize one, a mid-decade census hasn’t ever been taken, and the country isn’t prepared to deal with the logistics or the political implications. Secondly, the Constitution (in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment, which updates the Enumeration Clause in Article I, Section 2 of the original document) clearly states that the census is meant to include everyone residing in the United States: “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State.” That is to say that even if voting is restricted to citizens (and that’s laid out separately in the very next clause), the law demands representation for everybody.
There’s a lot at stake in counting people. A 2020 Pew Research Center study spelled out how removing undocumented immigrants from the census might mean the large states with lots of foreign-born residents lose seats in the House of Representatives, while some smaller ones gain. This is something Republicans are acutely aware of; two bills introduced this year go even further than Trump does, calling for the census to ignore all noncitizen residents, including green card and visa holders — the people the Constitution itself very clearly appears to require be counted.
None of this is unprecedented. During his first term, Trump attempted to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. That effort was rebuffed by the Supreme Court, on the grounds that the White House had misrepresented its motives in asking for the change; the decision didn’t address the constitutional issues. And those issues are significant, as Josh Marshall writes for Talking Points Memo:
Trump would by executive fiat change how many representatives each state sends to Congress and each states electoral votes. That’s quite literally how you rig an election. So in this scenario California’s and New York’s delegations show up in 2027 and Trump’s people say, no, you don’t have X reps. You have X-4. Send these other folks home. There’s simply no way to accept a president unilaterally and unconstitutionally taking away a state’s representation in Congress and the Electoral College and continuing to accept the legitimate authority of the federal government. I know that’s a big statement. But there’s not.
It’s always tempting to talk about Trump’s proposals as unprecedented, but questions about can-he-really-do-that aside, the franchise has long been and remains a battleground in American politics. This new challenge to the census is of a piece with the redistricting battle currently unfolding in the states (where the isn’t to shrink the pool of voters, but to solidify partisan electoral majorities through gerrymandering), and the Supreme Court’s decision to rehear arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, a redistricting case that could let the Court undo what’s left of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by removing the federal government’s ability to intervene if states gerrymander districts on the basis of race. As Matt Ford writes for The New Republic:
If the court guts Section 2’s remedial power in racial-gerrymandering cases, it will have immediate consequences for the nation’s political landscape. Republican-led state legislatures would be free to redraw their maps to eliminate any court-ordered majority-minority districts. They would also face far fewer constraints when drawing maps that dilute Black and Hispanic voting power to bolster the GOP’s electoral chances.
Jamelle Bouie writes for The New York Times that, taken together, these attacks on the franchise mark the end of a “fourth American republic,” the brief period of pluralistic, multiracial democracy that began with the Voting Rights Act’s overturning of Jim Crow restrictions:
[F]or all its harsh notes and discord, this was the closest the country ever came to the “composite nation” of Frederick Douglass’s aspirations: a United States that served as home to all who might seek the shelter of the Declaration of Independence and its “principles of justice, liberty and perfect human equality.”
It’s this America that Donald Trump and his movement hope to condemn to the ash heap of history. It’s this America that they’re fighting to destroy with their attacks on immigration, civil rights laws, higher education and the very notion of a pluralistic society of equals.
That’s why the situation is so critical, and it’s why Democratic legislators in Texas are taking the political and legal risks of denying quorum to delay redistricting, and why Democratic governors are rethinking their previous opposition to partisan gerrymanders. As NYU law professor Samuel Issacharoff tells Adam Liptak of the Times, they’re facing something that really is unprecedented in American political history — a serious attempt to undo democracy once and for all:
“The majority of today should always fear that it may find itself in the minority tomorrow and that its rules can be used against it,” he said. “What happens when this breaks down? What happens if the majority of today sees this as the last chance to take it all?”
And for now, the only answer, incomplete as it is, to that challenge is solidarity among those who still want and are willing to fight for an America that can still, someday, make good on its promises.
Join us for Live conversations this week!
Today, Monday, August 11, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we’ll talk with Texas State Representative James Talarico and American Federation of Government Employees president Everett Kelley. On Tuesday, August 12, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we’ll be speaking with writer and actress Amber Tamblyn about stardom, politics, and survival. On Wednesday, August 13, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, journalist Jon Lee Anderson will talk to us about his latest project. And on Thursday, August 14, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, messaging guru Anat Shenker-Osorio will return. We hope to see you for all of these conversations!
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It is clear that Republicans in support of Donald Trump want to end democracy in America. There might be different reasons on the part of each group and the individuals involved but the aim is shared: to dismantle the institutions of democracy, to distort the rule of law, and to eradicate all norms that support democracy. This has been a decades long effort and is now coming to fruition. Except for a few, Democrats have largely ignored the steady erosion of democracy and in some instances have been complicit in its demise. If we survive this onslaught, fundamental reform must happen and a recommitment to democratic values restored. I keep saying this, but we must do a better job educating our youth about how government is supposed to function and to cultivate an understanding of the principals that undergird democracy.
My guess: it won't matter that this regime can't navigate an actual Census. They will just say they did it and announce the results they want.