The Census Bureau said it found “certain processing anomalies” during its analysis of data collected from 2020’s census, casting doubt on whether the bureau will meet its December deadline to submit the results to the president.
“During post-collection processing, certain processing anomalies have been discovered,” Census Bureau Director Steve Dillingham said in a statement. “I am directing the Census Bureau to utilize all resources available to resolve this as expeditiously as possible. As it has been all along, our goal remains an accurate and statistically sound Census.”
The Census Bureau told the Washington Examiner that it would not comment further.
Dillingham added that “these types of processing anomalies have occurred in past censuses.” While no alarm bells have been raised that the errors run the risk of jeopardizing the integrity of the decennial count, they exacerbate an already tight deadline for the agency following a confusing back-and-forth of data collection deadline changes and court battles.
The first stage of census efforts, data collection, was supposed to end on July 31, per the bureau’s Operational Plan Version 4.0. However, the coronavirus pandemic led the bureau to push that deadline to Oct. 31. Because the bureau extended the data-collection period three months into the planned data-analysis period, the bureau also moved the deadline to submit the finalized data to the president from December 2020 to April 2021.
But in October, the Supreme Court ruled that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross could end data collection ahead of the Oct. 31 deadline so that the bureau could attempt to meet the Dec. 31 deadline, leaving fewer than three months for census data-crunchers to verify and tabulate the data of more than 300 million people.
The data submitted by the Census Bureau is used to apportion states’ seats in the House and votes in the Electoral College until the next census. States also use the data to redraw congressional district maps.
If the data is sent to President Trump by the Dec. 31 deadline, he might be able to alter how undocumented immigrants are taken into consideration when apportioning House seats. Article 1, Section 2, of the Constitution does not specify whether House apportionment should be based strictly on the number of citizens in each state, and the 14th Amendment states only that “representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state.”
If the bureau misses the December deadline, it may not submit data until after the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who is unlikely to discount undocumented immigrants when considering House apportionment. Three federal courts have found Trump’s apportionment plan unlawful, according to the Associated Press.
