The once-per-decade U.S. Census will ask about people's citizenship status in 2020, the Commerce Department announced late Monday. The move, which came at the request of the Justice Department, reinstates a controversial question that hadn't been used on all surveys for decades.

“After a thorough review of the legal, program, and policy considerations, as well as numerous discussions with the Census Bureau leadership and interested stakeholders,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross wrote, “I have determined that reinstatement of a citizenship question on the 2020 decennial census is necessary to provide complete and accurate data in response to the DOJ request.”

And this could significantly increase Republican advantages for two reasons:

1. It might dissuade noncitizens from participating in the census, thereby diluting the political power of the (mostly urban and Democratic) areas they come from.
2. Even without that, it would hand Republicans a new tool in redrawing districts even more in their favor.

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In recent decades, citizenship was not asked of everyone in the census, not since 1950.

The citizenship question was included on the census through 1950, and in 2000 it was included in the long form distributed to one in every six recipients. Since 2005, it has been included on the American Community Survey...

If Republicans can game the census with citizenship questions, which may dissuade an entire family of citizens from participating in it if there is one non-citizen in the home.......can legal citizens counter-game it?

Say you are a Democrat in a district and state that goes heavy Republican, should you decline to participate in the census?

It would mean the district would have to be larger to have enough people in it, perhaps including more non-Republican voters.

It would mean a lower population count and perhaps less Congressmen from your red state, and less federal funding for programs related to population.  That could be a disincentive for Republicans running the state to game the census system as a power promoting partisan enterprise.

Of course, Republicans living in heavy Democratic districts ot states could do the same thing.

Is there a way to fulfill the functions fo the census without using it as an every 10 year partisan weapon?

If millions of Americans refused to participate, could Congress create a non-partisan census count, and rules on using the data fairly, would they be forced to cut out the politics?