The Trump Administration has been accused of ‘unprecedented’ meddling in the 2020 census collection in an alleged effort to try and stop undocumented migrants from being counted so congressional districts wouldn’t be reapportioned in their favor.
A newly released memo apparently written by Census Bureau Deputy Director Ron Jarmin in September 2020 alleged former President Donald Trump and his officials were developing ‘a method to identify unauthorized residents’ which they would then use to match immigrants who’d been included in the census count.
That would mean these immigrants would be removed from the final count, giving the states where they live fewer congressional seats, and less sway over the election.
It appears Trump banked on many of those immigrants settling in Democrat-led states, meaning that leaving them out of the count could potentially grant his rival party less sway in congress.
The president has also made regular claims about voter fraud, alleging that illegal immigrants who vote fraudulently are far more likely to opt for the Democrat party.
His alleged attempts to influence the census could limit the impact of this illegal voting, by limiting the number of Democrat candidates these fraudulent voters would have the option to file ballots for.
Census Bureau Deputy Director Ron Jarmin (left) alleged former President Donald Trump (right) and his officials were developing ‘a method to identify unauthorized residents’ which they would then use to match immigrants enumerated in the census. Jarmin believed Trump’s administration would then use the data to reapportion the House of Representatives to benefit the Republican party before he left office
‘While the presidential memorandum may be a statement of the administration’s policy, the Census Bureau views the development of the methodology and processes as its responsibility as an independent statistical agency,’ the memo stated.
Jarmin believed Trump’s administration would then use the data to reapportion the House of Representatives to benefit the Republican party before he left office.
The US Census, which is conducted every decade, determines the distribution of House seats issued across states and, consequently, votes in the Electoral College.
Some officials have been accused of using the Census data when redrawing district lines to rig elections, a process known as gerrymandering. For example, if an official were to create a district that contained 70 percent of voters who identified as Republican, it would offer little chance for a Democratic candidate to win.
Although the Constitution requires the census to reflect the ‘whole number of persons in each state,’ Jarmin alleged Trump was aiming to exclude non-citizens from the count to make the voting districts more reflective of his target supporter.
He claims Trump adamantly ordered the Census Bureau, in a July 2020 presidential memorandum, to tally the number of unauthorized immigrants in each state and subtract them from the House reapportionment population estimates.
In Jarmin’s memo, which appeared to be a list of talking points to address with then Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, the census official complained about the administration’s alleged attempt to breach the privacy of census respondents.
He claimed the Commerce Department was ‘demonstrating an unusually high degree of engagement in technical matters,’ such as the calculation of population totals, ‘which is unprecedented relative to the previous censuses.’
Although the Constitution requires the census to reflect the ‘whole number of persons in each state,’ Jarmin alleged in a September 2020 memo (pictured) that Trump was aiming to exclude non-citizens from the count to make the voting districts more reflective of his target supporter
The Trump Administration has been accused of ‘unprecedented’ meddling in the 2020 census collection in an effort to ‘try and stop undocumented migrants from being counted so congressional districts wouldn’t be reapportioned in their favor’
Jarmin complained that political appointees had taken interest in how the Census Bureau would produce final population figures.
‘Interest was expressed in both item and status and count imputation,’ he penned. ‘Status and count imputation impacts the census unedited file that underlies the 12/31 apportionment products. Item imputation impacts the census edited file that impacts the 4/1 PL-94-171 redistricting product.’
He continued: ‘The Census Bureau views imputation methodologies as its responsibility as an independent statistical agency.’
The memo also accused political officials of pressing the bureau to end the counting process weeks early, as well as pushing to reduce the steps used to process and double-check population data so the apportionment figures could be provided to Trump before the end of the his presidential term.
The memo also accused political officials of pressing the bureau to end the counting process weeks early, as well as pushing to reduce the steps used to process and double-check population data
Ultimately, the Census Bureau ‘proved unable’ to provide Trump with the noncitizen figure count before he left office, the New York Times reported.
The unauthorized residents were also included in the 2020 Census count and in the allocation of House seats, as they had been in prior censuses.
The memo, which was made public in recent days, was part of hundreds of documents obtained by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s Law School in a lawsuit seeking information on Trump administration’s alleged plans for calculating the allotment of House seats.