Census screw-up favors blue states? Shocking

Flyers encouraging filling out the census hang at Sure We Can - Brooklyn, NY used under Creative Commons license by Wil540

I tend not to buy into conspiracy theories very often. I figure most mistakes are just that, mistakes. I get why some people are skeptical a lot of the time, of course, but I often feel like what we’re seeing is just people being what people tend to be: Stupid.

But that gets harder and harder when those mistakes seem to always favor one party over another. There’s a reason this one isn’t paid as I normally do on Thursdays, and that’s because this one isn’t likely to be stupidity.

A prime of why this is hard to believe is just an honest mistake example comes via this report at NPR:

For the 2020 census, all states were not counted equally well for population numbers used to allocate political representation and federal funding over the next decade, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released Thursday.

A follow-up survey the bureau conducted to measure the national tally's accuracy found significant net undercount rates in six states: Arkansas (5.04%), Florida (3.48%), Illinois (1.97%), Mississippi (4.11%), Tennessee (4.78%) and Texas (1.92%).

It also uncovered significant net overcount rates in eight states — 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%).

For the other 36 states, as well as Washington, D.C., the bureau did not find statistically significant net over- or undercount rates.

These revelations come after the population totals from a census beset by the coronavirus pandemic and years of interference from former President Donald Trump's administration have already been used to divvy up seats in the House of Representatives, as well as votes in the Electoral College, for the next decade.

That’s right, folks. Bad numbers—that they’re trying to blame on the Trump administration, apparently—have been used to apportion legislative seats.

Yet if you take a look, only one red state was overcounted, that being Utah.

Meanwhile, only one blue state was undercounted, namely Illinois.

Further, the majority of states that had screw-ups were the blue states. What that means is that the Census Bureau managed to completely botch this in a manner that drastically benefits Democrats over the next decade.

Now, I’m not a statistical expert here, but I find it very difficult to believe that good-faith mistakes would be so heavily skewed in one direction versus another. If there was a relatively even mix of red and blue states in both groups, it would be relatively easy to chalk this up to an honest mistake.

But it’s not.

Instead, we have what we see here.

What’s more, this won’t change anything. The official census—the one the bureau admits they screwed up on, apparently—is the official count and this will not and cannot be used to correct anything.

So when we start seeing Democrats winning more and more, it’s not because Democrats are actually putting forward proposals that more Americans support. It’s because the Census Bureau cooked the books to benefit the very same people who will give the bureau more and more money.

Now, in fairness, the bureau says it’s trying to do better next time.

To try to ameliorate the effects of the over- and undercounts, the bureau has set up an internal team that plans to research how to factor the follow-up survey's results into the bureau's population estimates, which, along with census data, help guide the distribution of an estimated $1.5 trillion a year in federal money to local communities.

Except, this isn’t about money. Most of that money isn’t stuff the federal government should be giving away or spending in the first place. The problem is in the distribution of things like members of the House and electoral votes.

That damage is done.

Yet I always find it funny how boxes of forgotten votes always seem to favor Democrats and how mistakes like this always tend to favor Democrats as well. It’s never the other way, and that’s more than I can honestly and genuinely accept as mere happenstance.

Is it a vast conspiracy? Probably not. If anything nefarious is going on, it’s not coordinated or anything of the sort. But if enough individual actors lacking in morals decide as individuals to do things in a certain way, the results are going to look an awful lot alike.

Especially if all of those immoral actors happen to back the same part.

Just sayin’.