DOJ pressed to reveal Biden’s secret plans to boost voting rights: report
(Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department is pressing states and voting rights groups to turn over information on the campaign’s plans to make it easier to vote, including whether Biden will seek to boost his presidential bid by adding a citizenship question to a 2020 census, according to a report in the Washington Post.
An attorney representing a voting rights group, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, did not respond to a request for comment.
The Post report said that the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Census Bureau were looking into the plans for a possible citizenship question, which would add an extra question to the census.
The U.S. Constitution prohibits racial discrimination in voting, but the citizenship question would appear to violate the provision by trying to change an established statistical tradition.
Biden supports a citizenship question, which he argued in May in Iowa during the first Democratic presidential debate, according to the Post.
(Reuters) – New Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said on Saturday he would make the 2020 census the basis for drawing district lines in the U.S., and said he would not support a citizenship question on the census.
Biden was responding to a question at a forum hosted by the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund in Washington.
He said he supported a question on the census to identify the citizens living in the country to determine congressional representation, but said it should be on census forms and be part of the count.
He also said he would support legislation that would require a separate question on how many citizens should be considered on census forms.
Biden’s stance of supporting a citizenship question and opposing legislation that would mandate the question has drawn criticism from some Democratic candidates and civil rights activists including the group Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which helped Biden to launch his presidential campaign.
The center’s executive director, Hina Shamsi, said in a statement that “this proposal would have serious consequences for our democracy.”
(Reuters) – New Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Saturday defended his decision to run for the White House without releasing his tax returns, saying the issue is a matter for voters, not the media.
“I’ve spoken about this a lot. You know, I think it’s a legitimate question,” Biden told reporters at a campaign stop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.