4-27-2021
Did Trump 'sabotage' the Census?
Myriad factors undoubtedly affected the census count, not all of which are political. "The census numbers as a whole have been shaped by a lot of negative and positive forces," Thomas Wolf, senior counsel at Brennan Center for Justice, told Mother Jones.
"We had wildfires, COVID, displacement, hurricanes."
But many were quick to blame Trump's failed attempt to add a citizenship question to the census for a potential undercount of Latino voters after accusing the administration of trying to "sabotage" an accurate count.
The Supreme Court ultimately rejected the attempt and advocacy groups spent months on outreach to traditionally undercounted communities, but some fear damage may already have been done.
"It caused people to not respond to the census," Kimball Brace, president of the redistricting consulting firm Election Data Services, told the Arizona Daily Star. "And, as a result, they were all lower than what they were anticipating. …
If you got all of those press reports and commentary and everything else talking about how much Trump doesn't want people to respond if they're Hispanic, you don't necessarily have to have a question on the survey."
The reapportionment data stunned political observers in Arizona, which saw its population grow by 11% over the last decade but failed to gain a House seat.
Some lawmakers faulted Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who invested nearly $2 million to boost response rates, for not doing enough to counter Trump's impact on the count.
Arizona state Sen. MartÃn Quezada, a Democrat from Phoenix, faulted Trump's census efforts for costing the state an additional seat but said Ducey deserves blame too after Quezada's bill to fund census efforts in areas heavily impacted by COVID-19 was rejected by the Republican-led legislature.
Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., said in a statement that "Ducey refused to stand up for Arizona and instead followed former President Trump's strategy to intimidate Latinos and discourage their participation."
Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., said on Twitter that he had helped lead the effort to extend the census deadline "because we *knew* Latinos, Native Americans, and Arizonans in rural & hard-to-reach areas weren't being counted. This undercount is an intentional part of Trump's legacy."
A spokesperson for Ducey pushed back on the claims, telling KPNX-TV that the state's rates were similar to other states and that response rate from tribal communities was high.
The missed projections were evident in other states with large and growing Latino populations, including California, which lost a House seat for the first time in history. Democrats widely blamed Trump.
"The Trump administration did everything it could to prevent an accurate count in the #2020Census, and now Californians are paying the price, the culture of fear he instilled within our communities jeopardizes billions in funding that our state deserves."
"There is a serious issue with undercounting of Hispanics in this Census," warned Sam Wang, a professor who runs the Princeton Election Consortium and Princeton Gerrymandering Project.
"The states that underperformed relative to July 2020 population estimates included Texas, Florida, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada — all Hispanic-rich states. A real risk of poor representation."
Election experts expressed concerns that Monday's release of the Census Bureau's congressional apportionment data reflected a systematic undercount of Latino residents that may be linked to former President Donald Trump's efforts to change census rules.
((trump also stoped the census taking early- and
his corruption to chane it to his/republican advantage failed when brought to Supreme Court)))
Home 
