Summary
- Two
young Republican groups challenge 2020 census results. - Lawsuit
filed in Florida federal court targeting population data. - Challenge
aims to influence congressional seat apportionment.
Targeting the U.S. population
statistics that decide how many congressional seats each state receives, the
lawsuit was filed in a federal court in Florida. Prior to next year’s
elections, Republican-led state legislatures have been under pressure from
President Donald Trump to redistrict their congressional districts in favor of
the GOP.
Jeffrey Wice, a specialist in
redistricting and the census, stated on Friday that the Florida lawsuit was a
component of that plan to maintain Republican control of the House of
Representatives.
“Clearly, this is part of that
agenda to use the courts and state legislatures in any way they can to retain
congressional power,”
said Wice, a New York Law School professor.
“It’s not a
very great step forward.”
As required for cases involving
the process of allocating congressional seats among the states, known as
apportionment, the University of South Florida College Republicans, the
Pinellas County Young Republicans, and two other individuals filed a request on
Tuesday for a three-judge panel to hear their lawsuit.
In recent months, some Republican
elected leaders have called for a mid-decade revision to the once-every-decade
head count of all Americans. Trump gave the Commerce Department instructions in
August to have the Census Bureau begin preparing a new census that would not
include illegal immigrants.
Recently, Republican Governor Ron
DeSantis accused the Census Bureau of “shortchanging” Florida,
claiming that the third most populous state in the union should have an
additional seat in the House. Following the 2020 census, Florida acquired one
more House seat, bringing its total to 28. In contrast to other states, Florida
hardly offered any tools to encourage citizens to complete census forms, and
DeSantis dismissed early proposals to establish a state committee to encourage
participation.
What specific statistical methods
are being challenged in the lawsuit?
The Census Bureau employs this
approach to safeguard privacy of personal data by introducing a
“noise” of random variation into the datasets. The purpose of the
noise is to avoid discovering an identity of an individual. Critics contend it
results in more inaccuracies in the population counts which could impact their
use for purposes such as apportionment and redistricting.
This technique is utilized for counting
individuals in “group quarters” (e.g., college dorms, nursing homes),
or where the census taker was not able to get direct answers. Imputation
furthers the process of name confirmation to fill in missing data points using
statistical models and adjacent data points.
The lawsuit contends imputation is
an illegal type of sampling and prohibitive for purposes of congressional
apportionment per federal law.
