New GOP scheme to rig presidential elections: Missouri sues to exclude undocumented from census

In a case that could have profound nationwide consequences for elections, the state of Missouri has sued the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Commerce to block the federal government from including undocumented immigrants and temporary visa holders in the country’s once-a-decade census count. 

If the lawsuit is successful, states with substantial immigrant populations could face a steep decrease in their political representation in the House of Representatives and the electoral college, which could possibly even impact the outcome of presidential elections. 

The office of Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway (R) filed the lawsuit Friday, calling it a “first in the nation” suit aimed at stopping the census from “unconstitutionally allowing illegal aliens to commandeer the path to The White House and compromise our elections.” Two Florida young Republican groups filed a similar lawsuit* in September, arguing the inclusion of undocumented immigrants dilutes the voting power of lawful citizens and demanding changes to the 2030 census count. 

Hanaway went even further.

Missouri is asking a federal court to order the government to redo the 2020 census report and the 2021 apportionment to remove all undocumented immigrants and temporary visa holders from the count and recalculate how many seats in Congress each state is given based on its population. It is also seeking an injunction blocking the Census Bureau from including those groups in the 2030 census count.

“Foreign trespassers should not control the direction of this nation,” Hanaway said in a social media post announcing the lawsuit. 

Hanaway was appointed Missouri’s attorney general by Gov. Mike Kehoe (R) last year. She has played a central role in GOP attempts to block Missourians from holding a referendum vote on whether to approve the gerrymandered congressional map that the state’s GOP-controlled legislature passed last year. 

In November, Hanaway announced she was referring the referendum campaign to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after claiming, without providing any evidence, that undocumented immigrants were working to collect petition signatures. She went on to launch an investigation into the matter, demanding lists of signature gatherers. 

Hanaway also made no secret of the partisan goals behind the census lawsuit, filing an expert report from Adam Kincaid, the national GOP’s leading mapmaker and executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust. In October, Kincaid revealed in federal court that he was hired by the Republican National Committee to draw the map for the mid-decade gerrymander Texas lawmakers passed last year after President Donald Trump insisted Republicans were “entitled” to five more of the state’s congressional seats. 

In the new report, Kincaid concluded Missouri would have an additional seat in Congress if the population count included only U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. Missouri went even further in its complaint declaring that the change would give the state an additional electoral vote in presidential elections.

Based on Kincaid’s analysis, Missouri’s complaint concluded that limiting the apportionment population to just citizens and lawful permanent residents could ultimately result in the transfer of 11 congressional seats – with states like California, New York, Illinois and Texas losing seats to states including Missouri, Florida, Tennessee and South Carolina. 

*Intervening defendants are represented in the lawsuit by the Elias Law Group (ELG). ELG Chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.

This story has been updated to include additional information.