FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The House is seeking more information about the Census Bureau’s partnership with left-leaning organizations ahead of the 2020 census, during which it potentially incorrectly awarded Democrat congressional districts and Electoral College votes.
House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., wrote Tuesday to acting Census Bureau Director George Cook seeking information by April 7 about what led to the bureau’s overcounting of populations in blue states and undercounting the populations of some red states.
The letter notes that the bureau partnered with the Human Rights Campaign—an LGBTQ+ advocacy group—as well as the National Urban League and the NAACP, both liberal civil rights organizations.
Comer noted that leaders of the organizations were outspoken critics of President Donald Trump and Republicans.
“The partisan nature of such statements from 2020 partner organizations calls into question whether all partner organizations fairly assisted the Bureau in ensuring a full and complete count of the U.S. population in 2020 and whether any such groups should not be engaged again as partners during the 2030 Census and tests leading up to it,” Comer wrote.
The inquiry asked for all documents “pertaining to measures the bureau took to ensure its partner organizations remained politically neutral and unbiased.”
Comer further seeks to know what measures the bureau will take to avoid political bias in 2030. The last census was conducted during the first Trump administration.
Comer’s letter requests documents “pertaining to delays in pre-apportionment work in 2020 and 2021 and whether or how they allowed the Biden administration to make enumeration alterations affecting the ultimate apportionment of congressional districts in 2021.”
After the census was completed and reapportionment of congressional districts occurred, the Census Bureau released the Post-Enumeration Survey in 2022. Because of an inaccurate overcount, Colorado gained a U.S. House seat, while Rhode Island and Minnesota kept seats they should have lost under an accurate count, the Comer letter notes. By contrast, Texas and Florida were not awarded seats they should have gained, Comer noted.
“Such miscounts clearly are avoidable, as no states had significant miscounts in the 2010 Census,” Comer wrote.
Comer’s letter also asked for documents that could shed light on “longer deployments of enumerators in hard-to-count urban areas than in hard-to-count rural areas.”
As for the partner organizations, Comer brought up partisan comments made by leaders of the groups that assisted with the census.
“The bureau enlisted many partner organizations to facilitate aspects of the enumeration process for the 2020 Census,” Comer wrote. “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.”
Comer noted, “The Human Rights Campaign expressed a clearly partisan stance against then-candidate Trump during the 2024 election, writing, ‘Are you tired of waking up every day hearing about the latest hateful and divisive thing Donald Trump said?‘”
He noted that Corine Mack, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP branch, said Trump’s “whole vision is to be just like Hitler.”
Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, wrote in an op-ed that Trump was building an administration filled with white supremacists to “reassert white privilege on every facet of society” and “purge the armed forces of top officers of color.”
The Daily Signal first reported in September that the House Oversight and Accountability Committee opened an investigation into the potential politicization of the population count and miscounts in 14 states.
The Biden administration’s Census Bureau revealed in May 2022 that it undercounted the Republican-leaning states of Arkansas by 5%, Florida by 3.4%, Mississippi by 4.11%, Tennessee by 4.78%, and Texas by 1.92%. The Census Bureau undercounted one Democrat-leaning state, Illinois, by 1.97%.
The Census Bureau overcounted Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware by 5.45% as well as other Democrat-leaning states: Hawaii by 6.79%, Massachusetts by 2.24%, Minnesota by 3.84%, New York by 3.44%, and Rhode Island by 5%. It also overcounted two Republican-leaning states, Ohio by 1.49% and Utah by 2.59%.
