Savannah Hulsey Pointer, FISM News
[elfsight_social_share_buttons id=”1″]
Discrepancies with data from the 2020 census could be impacting elections to the detriment of Republicans, according to a recent report.
The 2020 census undercounted the population in Republican-leaning states, costing them at least three congressional seats and electoral college votes The Epoch Times reported.
According to a review of the Census Bureau’s post-census survey, Democrat-leaning states gained at least one additional seat and vote as a result of overcounts and preserved at least two that they ought to have lost. These inaccuracies have drawn the attention of numerous experts and at least one lawmaker.
“It’s consistently undercounting red states and consistently overcounting blue states,” commented Hans von Spakovsky, head of the Election Law Reform Initiative at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He went on to call it “a very odd coincidence” and noted that “so far, the Census Bureau hasn’t really explained how and why they made these mistakes.”
In June of this year Fair Lines America (FLA), which is a conservative-leaning nonprofit focused on redistricting, first sounded the alarm about the issue.
“It’s obviously concerning that there’s a pattern in the error of the census,” said Adam Kincaid, executive director of FLA and the National Republican Redistricting Trust.
Fourteen states had statistically significant inaccuracies in the census count, according to the Census Bureau. The GOP-dominated states of Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas—all save Illinois—were reportedly undercounted. Meanwhile, the Democratic-majority states of Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Utah—all save Ohio and Utah—were overcounted.
Even after taking into account the states where the miscount did not achieve statistical significance, the 2020 error pattern is still there. Only Illinois and Maryland, both of which lean Democratic, had an undercount among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
This as opposed to five Republican-leaning states (Alaska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia), 12 Democrat-leaning states saw overcounts of at least 1%. States without a definite political bent, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, tended to have tallies that were fairly accurate.
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) has been asking questions about the results, calling the issue “deeply concerning for the legitimacy of our Democracy” in an Oct. 24 letter to the Census Bureau Director Robert Santos.
“This wasn’t a coincidence because things like this don’t just happen. The swamp in Washington has an agenda. They want Democrats in power and won’t let anything get in their way,” he said in a press release. “We must get to the bottom of what happened. When Republicans take back the House majority, we will use our oversight authority to investigate the Census Bureau and determine how and why these significant errors happened to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”