Just like the Census Bureau predicted at the beginning of the pandemic, the COVID-19 outbreak has caused major delays in the bureau’s plans to release the data used for apportionment and redistricting, a Bureau official confirmed Wednesday.
The deadline in Texas to file for a run at office is December 31. At this rate, new districts will not have even been drawn by then.
Probably need to just have Governors fill them, then*.
*applies to Republican governors only, of course
I’ll bet $10 that by March 1, the Census bureau announces that there were so many problems with the count in urban areas that its figures will be merely provisional, and that there will be entirely new counts done in at least 50 cities…
How does losing 500,000 or so to Covid affect the count?
I continue to marvel at the efficiencies a successful businessman managed to bring to the Federal bureaucracy.
It reduces it by about 500,000?
We have a similar problem with recently enacted laws that put strict timelines on redistricting.
Census date is April 15, 2020. The vast majority of COVID deaths came after that date, so those people will still be counted in this census.
“Still, redistricting experts appreciated that the bureau was being more forthright about the expected delays, after months in which the Trump administration was cagey about how the production of the data was going.”
Chaos! Confusion! Lies and obfuscation! MAGA!
The President should order an extra six month comprehensive review, just to ensure the actual count was done right by the Constitution.
Maybe we can get legislation banning gerrymandering before the states can redistrict.
The complete incompetence of the prior administration* is outweighed only by their cruelty and indifference to human suffering.