OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The mistakes made in the most recent Census have given the Democrats a major advantage.
The 2020 Census overcounted people in mainly Democrats states and undercounted people in Republican states, having effects in both the House of Representatives and the Electoral College, Breitbart News reported.
With the 2022 elections roughly 50 days away and the Supreme Court about to take up major election cases, conservatives are crying foul and demanding answers.
The Census Clause of the Constitution requires a census to count the United States population every 10 years. Those totals determine how many seats in Congress each state has, what the lines of every federal and state legislative district is in each of those states, and how many votes each state has in the Electoral College to elect the president every four years.
An official survey shows that census workers undercounted people in Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas. The same survey shows workers overcounted people in Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Utah.
Every state that was undercounted has been strongly Republican and every overcounted state, other than Ohio and Utah has been strongly Democrat in recent elections.
Because of the counting issues Florida will not get two seats in the House that it was entitled to if the Census was counted correctly and Texas is missing one. That also effects how many votes they get in the Electoral College.
“If a politician from Florida decides to run for president in 2024, his (or her) home state will be short two votes in the Electoral College,” Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation and the American Constitutional Rights Union said, “and when the new session of the U.S. House of Representatives convenes in January 2023, Florida will be missing two congressional seats to which it is entitled.”
And the overcount in Rhode Island allows it to keep a Congressional seat it is not entitled to by the Constitution.
No one has explained why there has been a massive explosion in the error rate for the Census since the 2010 count and there does not appear to be a way to fix it.
In August, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a rare emergency order and sided with voters who challenged Georgia’s system of electing members to the state’s Public Service Commission.
The case began when a group of Black leaders sued the state, claiming the Republican-controlled General Assembly approved a redistricting plan last year that dilutes the Black vote in two of the five PSC districts.
Earlier this month, a judge postponed two November elections in Georgia for the Public Service Commission, ruling the electoral structure disenfranchises Black voters.
One week after that, an appeals court reversed that decision, pending the state’s appeal of that first ruling.
Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the elections should not proceed while the appeal continues.
The case is being closely watched because the state’s Public Service Commission, among other responsibilities, sets customers’ utility rates and oversees the construction budget of projects.
Under Georgia’s system, commissioners run statewide but must live in one of five districts.
“The move was a rare example of the conservative court siding with voters over state officials in disputes regarding election rules, especially when the court is asked to act on an emergency basis. The Supreme Court restored a district court ruling requiring that this year’s election for two of the commission seats be postponed so that the legislature could create a new system for electing commissioners,” CNN reported.
“The unsigned order from the Supreme Court left the door open for the state’s Republican officials to try again to get Georgia’s rules for electing the commission revived for November’s election. However, later Friday, Georgia indicated in a court filing that it would not ask again for the appeals court to halt the trial judge’s order before November’s election while the appeal on the merits played out,” the outlet added.
Nico Martinez, a partner at Bartlit Beck LLP who represented the challengers, said the Supreme Court’s order was an “important step toward ensuring that this November’s PSC elections are not held using a method that unlawfully dilutes the votes of millions of Black citizens in Georgia.”
“We look forward to presenting the merits of our case on appeal and are confident the district court’s well-reasoned decision will ultimately be upheld,” Martinez said in a statement.
The Supreme Court order comes as many states are fighting over new congressional maps before the crucial 2022 and 2024 elections.
Recently, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled 4-3 to reject a GOP-drawn map of U.S. House districts as gerrymandered, sending it back to meet constitutional parameters approved by Ohio voters.
However, new maps will not be put in place until 2024.
