small town in Florida, was 48 percent black, according to the 2000 census, yet it never yielded a single black city council member in its history. Because of its size, citizenship data was lacking, and a large Haitian population also existed in Lake Park. The case would have been stronger had data been available.

There are many towns, counties and school boards on the margins where a lack of citizenship data takes them off the list of places effectively protected by the Voting Rights Act when it comes to redistricting. The voting rights alarmism that has become so familiar falls silent when it involves extending protections to Americans who live in smaller jurisdictions with larger alien populations. The lack of a citizenship question doesn’t just impair voting rights enforcementin small towns.

Even in the bigger cities, the Justice Department is stuck relying on citizenship “estimates” to determine if the Voting Rights Act is being violated. Not asking the citizenship question on the census has eroded African American political clout in places like Los Angeles. For decades, black Los Angeles residents were demographically squeezed out of local government by a growing Hispanic population of mixed citizenship.

Over time, Hispanic populations that were a mix of both citizens and aliens had the population numbers when it came to drawing district lines. A black majority-minority district might require a given population of residents, almost all citizens, while a Hispanic district next door would have the same total population, but a smaller population of citizens. Blacks ended up being the losers here