The Patriot Post® · SHOCKER: Census SNAFU Favors Democrats

Four months ago, the Census Bureau finally released its report on the state-by-state accuracy of the 2020 census, and it showed that it significantly overcounted the populations of eight states and significantly undercounted the populations of six states.

These things happen, right?

Wrong. The eight states that were significantly overcounted were Delaware (+5.45%), Hawaii (+6.79%), Massachusetts (+2.24%), Minnesota (+3.84%), New York (+3.44%), Ohio (+1.49%), Rhode Island (+5.05%), and Utah (+2.59%), and the six states that were undercounted were Arkansas (-5.04%), Florida (-3.48%), Illinois (-1.97%), Mississippi (-4.11%), Tennessee (-4.78%), and Texas (-1.92%).

Notice a pattern? Of the eight overcounted states, six are deep-blue Democrat states; one, Utah, is a deep-red Republican state; and one, Ohio, leans slightly Republican. As for the six undercounted states, four are solidly Republican; one, Florida, leans slightly Republican; and only one, Illinois, is a blue state.

“Those costly errors will distort congressional representation and the Electoral College,” writes Hans von Spakovsky.

Did you catch that? In a House divided by a razor-thin margin, and in a country where the turn of a single state can decide a presidential election, the Census Bureau just made a bunch of colossal errors — and almost all of them are in the Democrats’ favor.

A senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former Justice Department lawyer and FEC commissioner, Spakovsky is an expert on elections among other things. He continues: “It means that when the Census Bureau reapportioned the House of Representatives, Florida was cheated out of two additional seats it should have gotten; Texas missed out on another seat; Minnesota and Rhode Island each kept a representative they shouldn’t have, and Colorado was awarded a new member of the House it didn’t deserve.”

What’s more, as Spakovsky writes, “These harmful errors also mean billions in federal funds will be misallocated. Funding for many federal programs is distributed to the states based on population. Overcounted states will now receive a larger share of federal funds than they are entitled to, at the expense of the undercounted states.”

Aside from the fact that Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware received the largest-percentage overcount of all, the most maddening case is that of Democrat-controlled Minnesota, which would’ve lost a congressional seat during reapportionment if just 26 fewer residents had been counted. Instead, though, the Census overcounted the state by an estimated 216,971 people. Next would be Rhode Island, which would’ve lost a seat if the Census Bureau had correctly counted 19,000 fewer residents and not instead overcounted by more than 55,000.

On the other side of the ledger, Florida needed just 171,500 more residents to gain another congressional seat. Yet the survey shows that Florida was undercounted by more than three-quarters of a million people. The report also said that Texas needed just 189,000 more people to gain another congressional seat. Instead, the Lone Star State was undercounted by 560,319 residents.

How does the 2020 Census compare to the one before it? Poorly, to say the least. As Spakovsky notes, “The Census Bureau has not explained how it got the 2020 census so wrong. This is particularly troublesome because the bureau reported an error rate of 0.01% in the 2010 census — an overcount of only 36,000 people, a statistically insignificant mistake.” So whereas the 2010 Census overcounted by .01%, the 2020 version undercounted by .24%. Statistically speaking, that’s a colossal difference.

Your tax dollars at work.

“Achieving an accurate count for all 50 states and DC is always a difficult endeavor,” said Census Bureau Director Robert L. Santos, who somehow still has a job, “and these results suggest it was difficult again in 2020, particularly given the unprecedented challenges we faced.”

What can be done to correct this outrage, this unfairness? Oh, check back in 2030. “Unfortunately,” Spakovsky, writes, “the federal statutes governing the census and apportionment provide no remedy to correct this problem. And it would be very difficult to devise an acceptable remedy this far after the fact.”

This, of course, causes us to wonder: Why does it take the Census a full two years to discover its mistakes? Moreover, who’s being held accountable for these mistakes? And what assurances do we have that they won’t repeat themselves again, especially given the tendency of recent migration patterns away from woke, economically stagnant blue states to free and economically vibrant red states?

At a time when our faith in the government has never been lower, the Census Bureau says, “Hold my beer.”