[Infowarrior] - OT: Likely new Census head causes alarm

[Richard Forno]

Leading Trump Census pick causes alarm

The 2020 count might be put in the hands of an inexperienced professor who wrote that 'Competitive Elections are Bad for America.'

By DANNY VINIK and ANDREW RESTUCCIA

11/21/2017 05:06 AM EST

The Trump administration is leaning toward naming Thomas Brunell, a Texas professor with no government experience, to the top operational job at the U.S. Census Bureau, according to two people who have been briefed on the Bureau’s plans.

Brunell, a political science professor, has testified more than half a dozen times on behalf of Republican efforts to redraw congressional districts, and is the author of a 2008 book titled “Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections Are Bad for America.”

The choice would mark the administration’s first major effort to shape the 2020 Census, the nationwide count that determines which states lose and gain electoral votes and seats in the House of Representatives.

The fate of the Census under Trump has been closely watched by voting-rights advocates worried that the administration — which has already made unsupported claims about voter fraud — might nudge it in directions that over- or under-count some Americans. Subtle bureaucratic choices in the wording and administration of the Census can have huge consequences for who is counted, and how it shifts American voting districts.

The pick would break with the long-standing precedent of choosing a nonpolitical government official as deputy director of the U.S. Census Bureau. The job has typically been held by a career civil servant with a background in statistics. It does not require Senate confirmation, so Congress would have no power to block the hire.

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“If true, it signals an effort by the administration to politicize the Census,” said Terri Ann Lowenthal, former co-director of the Census Project, an organization that tracks the census. “It’s very troubling.”

Brunell was under consideration over the summer for the Senate-confirmable job of Census Director, but the administration declined to nominate him after receiving pushback from Capitol Hill,  according to two people who track the Census closely.

The White House and Census Bureau both referred comments to the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau. The Commerce Department declined to comment. Brunell, reached by phone, declined to comment.

The hiring could be announced as soon as this week, though Trump administration personnel decisions often change at the last minute. One administration official said the situation remains "fluid."

As deputy director of the Census Bureau, Brunell would become the highest-ranking permanent official at the agency. Though the job technically reports to the Census director, that slot is temporarily being filled by a career civil servant, since former director John Thompson resigned at the end of June. There is currently no nominee for a permanent director.

"This is worse than making him director,” said a former high-ranking Commerce Department official. “There still is going to be hell to pay on the optics. The Democrats and civil rights community will go nuts."

Though it may seem like a dry bureaucratic task, the $16 billion decennial Census has become the focus of hotly contested political arguments in a moment when the question of who counts as an American has risen to the top of the national debate.

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https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/21/trump-census-pick-causes-alarm-252571