OPINION:
Even California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for the most part, has bluntly touted his state’s gerrymandering as a partisan act of revenge against Texas gerrymandering. Virginia Democrats present their rigged 10-1 congressional maps as civic virtue advancing fairness to democracy.
Gerrymandering has been icky since Massachusetts Gov. Gerry Elbridge approved a congressional district that looked like a salamander to give his party an advantage in 1812. Both sides do it, and this race to the bottom can often lead to clowns in the House of Representatives. “Independent” commissions have produced mixed results, at best, in enhancing more competitive elections. In a federal system, states are entitled to structure their redistricting processes as they see fit.
What ought to be beyond dispute, however, is that the federal government (wittingly or unwittingly) should not tilt the playing field. Yet the evidence from the 2020 census suggests that that occurred.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer said on the “Just The News, No Noise” show, “The basic count was miscounted grossly in the last census, to the tune of costing the Republicans anywhere from four to five congressional seats.” Mr. Comer added, “the Census Bureau was biased.”
Last month, Mr. Comer wrote to Census Bureau Director George Cook seeking information about what led to the bureau’s sloppy counting. The Comer letter notes that the bureau partnered with liberal-leaning and openly partisan groups such as the Human Rights Campaign and the National Urban League. The 2020 census was conducted during the first Trump presidency, but it was overseen by deep-state bureaucrats.
“The Bureau enlisted many partner organizations to facilitate aspects of the enumeration process for the 2020 Census,” Mr. Comer wrote to Mr. Cook. “Statements made by leaders of some of these organizations raise serious questions about those organizations’ ability to remain non-partisan and unbiased in their involvement with the census.”
The counts might have been honest mistakes or just dumb bureaucracy, but the Census Bureau’s Post-Enumeration Survey in 2022 was released after redistricting decisions.
The number showed the overcounting led to more U.S. House seats and Electoral College votes for Democratic-leaning states.
Colorado gained a House seat it shouldn’t have, and Rhode Island and Minnesota held on to House seats the states should have lost under a proper count, according to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Conveniently, if the count had been accurate, then Texas would have received one new House seat and Florida would have gained two.
The Census Bureau might just say, “Trust us. We’ll do better in 2030.” Perhaps they will. The 2010 census did not produce comparable discrepancies, but the damage from 2020 cannot be undone. Apportionment decisions have already been made, and elections have been conducted under those maps.
In addition to Colorado, Minnesota and Rhode Island, the Post Enumeration Survey identified statistically significant overcounts in the blue states of New York, Massachusetts, Hawaii and Delaware. Besides Texas and Florida, other undercounted red states were Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee.
To be fair, the reliably Republican-leaning states of Ohio and Utah were also overcounted, while the reliably Democratic state of Illinois was undercounted. Still, the miscounts clearly favored one party.
Even with the miscount, Florida gained a House seat; it just came up two shy of what it should have. Montana, North Carolina and Oregon each gained a House seat. Texas gained two seats despite missing out on a third had the count been correct. Meanwhile, states that lost population under the 2020 count were Ohio and New York, despite being overcounted, California, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Let’s stress that it would be wrong if the Census Bureau made broad miscounts to give Republicans an advantage, but the federal bureaucracy seldom makes mistakes in that direction.
At the end of the day, we expect nothing less than opportunistic politicians seeking an advantage, but they must still face accountability to voters for their efforts. Federal bureaucrats don’t stand accountable to voters, and, as we have seen, sue whenever held accountable by the people’s elected representatives.
Allowing unaccountable federal bureaucrats to partner with a band of left-wing organizations to gerrymander America is the worst-case scenario.
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