Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said during an interview with SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Saturday that counting American citizens on the 2020 Census is a “no brainer” that should not warrant the outrage it has from left-wing politicians and the open borders lobby.
In a conversation with Breitbart News Political Editor Matt Boyle and Deputy Political Editor Amanda House, Landry said President Trump’s administration’s decision to add the citizenship question to the 2020 Census is necessary to end voter dilution across the country.
Landry said:
We want to know who’s in this country and certainly we want to make sure that the people in this country are here legally. Are you a citizen? Are you here on a visa? And so forth and so on. And it’s important because we use that Census count to be able to apportion our legislative seats and you know the Supreme Court has spoken very clearly that the use of the Census has to be done in a one man, one vote based upon a voting age population. To me, it was a no brainer. I don’t know what all the fights about. [Emphasis added]
…
So basically what’s happening is, is you are diluting the rights of those voters in neighboring congressional districts or legislative districts. For example, if you’ve got a large concentration populations of illegal immigrants — say like in a sanctuary city, it becomes a magnet for illegals to go — then you run the Census. Those cities end up with more congressional and legislative representation based upon the Census, right, because the sheer number of people that are in those particular cities, irrespective of the fact of whether they are there legally or not. [Emphasis added]
However, if you have the data, that says whether or not those people in those cities are legal, they’re legally there, they’re citizens, and then you apportion those particular seats based upon the voting age population, not by the actual count, you then by restore the rights of all of the voters, you don’t disenfranchise any voters around the country. [Emphasis added]
Listen to the full interview with Landry here:
Most recently, Landry wrote an exclusive op-ed for Breitbart News where he detailed how counting U.S. citizens on the Census “protects” the American republic.
“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,” Landry writes. “Moreover, it incentivizes sanctuary cities by granting an electoral advantage at the expense of non-sanctuary cities.”
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.