Ex-census overseer: Skewed 2020 census meant 6 states wrongly lost a House seat, 6 more rural states gained one

The 2020 census was underfunded, understaffed, and cut short. This apparently affected some rural areas, but widespread undercounts of Blacks and Hispanics and overcounts of whites and Asians caused a malapportionment of U.S. House seats that benefited more rural states, Robert Shapiro writes for The Washington Monthly. Shapiro oversaw the 2000 census as President Clinton's commerce undersecretary for economic affairs, and chairs the economic policy think tank Sonecon.

"The large-scale errors in the census cost New York, Texas, Florida, Arizona, California, and New Jersey one seat each, and resulted in an extra representative for Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Montana, Wisconsin, and Indiana," Shapiro writes. "Those wide-ranging errors are matters of public record, because the professionals at the Census Bureau obligingly report the decennial census undercount and overcount rates by race and ethnicity. Compared to 2010, undercounts in 2020 jumped from 2.06 to 3.3 percent for Blacks, from 1.54% to 4.99% for Hispanics, and from 0.15% to 0.91% for Native Americans on reservations and Alaskan Natives. Overcounts also shot up, increasing from 0.83% to 1.64% for whites and from virtually zero to 2.62% for Asians." Shapiro's crew calculated the effect on apportionment by applying the error rates to each state's racial and ethnic makeup.

"The debasement of the 2020 census did not have clear partisan effects. The more diverse states that lost out—states in which Black and Hispanic people account for between 33 percent and 52 percent of the population—include not only blue New York, California, and New Jersey but also red Texas and Florida and purple Arizona," Shapiro writes. "Similarly, the unwitting winners include not only red Montana and Indiana but also blue Minnesota and Oregon and purple Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—all states with populations that are 80 to 87 percent white and Asian."

Shapiro says the Trump administration didn't skew the census by overtly manipulating the results but by simply making it easier for serious errors to occur.

Migration of rural Democrats into the Republican Party has made congressional districts less competitive, experts say

"While gerrymandering is a factor that receives an abundance of attention, experts say that the grand political realignment of working-class rural voters abandoning the Democratic Party is a much more salient cause, particularly throughout Appalachia and into the South," reports David Catanese of McClatchy Newspapers.

Catanese's object example is Central Kentucky's 6th District, a once-competitive district that was already trending Republican before the state legislature made it even more so in this year's redistricting. It was held from 2004 to 2012 by Democrat Ben Chandler. He told Catanese that he had to practice the “politics of confusion” in order to survive in a district where most voters identified as conservative: “I had to confuse my constituents so they couldn’t tell whether I was a liberal or a conservative or a moderate.”

That became harder "as data showed him that an increasing amount of his constituents were primarily depending on conservative media outlets like Fox News, which blared narratives that tarred his entire party with the same broad brush," Catanese reports. "More frequently, media of all stripes increasingly seek representatives’ reactions to the latest national controversy, rather than probe their proposed legislation or committee work."

Chandler said, “All politics is national now, and it’s very simple. Everybody gets the same sort of news nationally and they don’t get nearly as much local news as they get national and international news. That’s been a big change. Because of the stances the national Democratic Party takes, it’s easy for the state Republican Party to brand all of the Democrats in the state with that national brand, which is very definitely an unpopular brand statewide and in most of the districts.”

Catanese offers another view: "Scott Jennings, a well-known and well-wired Republican operative, said the reason the seat isn’t competitive anymore is because Kentucky Democrats won’t nominate a Chandler-like moderate." Jennings said, “It would take a Democrat who isn’t completely totally beholden to the progressive left. You’d have to be non-orthodox on abortion, guns, education, some economic issues…If you popped yourself out of the ditch and said, ‘I’m a pro-gun Democrat’, you’d immediately get a primary and parts of the party would swarm you.”

Referendum roundup: New York state rejects looser voting rules; Maine adopts vague 'right to food' amendment

Off-year elections are usually pretty quiet, but voters are often asked to decide questions large and small. This week there were 24 statewide refernda in six states. Here are a few with rural resonance:

In Maine, by share of population the most rural state, two-thirds of voters approved a first-in-the-nation constitutional amendment establishing a "right to food," even though there's considerable confusion over what it means. "Described as an outgrowth of the food sovereignty movement, the amendment says Mainers have a right to grow and consume food of their choosing," Chuck Abbott reports for the Food and Environment Reporting Network. That extends to popular issues such as raw milk and the right to save and exchange seeds as long as it doesn't violate laws or exploit natural resources.

"Supporters used the campaign to make the case the amendment would ensure the right to grow vegetables and raise livestock in an era when corporatization threatens local ownership of the food supply," Patrick Whittle reports for The Associated Press. "They positioned the amendment as a chance for Mainers to wrestle control of the food supply back from large landowners and giant retailers with little connection to the community."

Abbott reports, "Opponents said the amendment was so broadly written that it could override animal cruelty laws or open the gate to domestic livestock in urban backyards. The Bangor Daily News said the ambiguous wording would put judges in charge of interpreting what the amendment means at the practical level." The paper also noted that the amendment doesn't expressly mention hunger.

In Colorado, 54 percent of voters rejected a measure that would have raised $150 million to partially fund private, out-of-school learning for children by raising the marijuana tax five percentage points to 20%, Jenny Brundin and Bente Birkeland report for Colorado Public Radio.

Proposition 119 aimed to help children falling behind because of the pandemic by providing tutoring, enrichment opportunities in the arts, career and technical training, physical therapy, mental health services, support for students with special needs, and mentoring. However, "opponents of the measure said it would have taken dollars away from public education and would have instead funded private companies to provide services," Brundin and Birkeland report.

In Texas, voters approved two constitutional amendments by broad margins. "Proposition 3, which was approved 63% to 37%, bars governments from taking any action that "prohibits or limits religious services," Asher Price reports for Axios Austin. "The proposition is part of a much broader national Covid-19 debate that pits public health officials bent on stymieing the disease's spread against pastors who say they were protecting their practice of religion."

And Proposition 6, approved by nearly 88% of Texas voters, "gives residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities the right to designate an 'essential caregiver' who could not, under most circumstances, be barred from in-person visits," Price reports. "The proposition comes after stories of elderly people enduring months of isolation as part of the fight against Covid-19." It's unclear whether nursing homes could bar essential caregivers who are unvaccinated or unmasked. Since nursing home workers must be vaccinated, it stands to reason that visitors would be more likely to infect residents. That could be particularly deadly, since nursing home residents are far more likely to die from Covid-19 than others.

Voters in New York rejected three amendments that would have broadened voting access by allowing same-day registration without proof of residency, let voters get absentee ballots without needing an excuse, and requiring that incarcerated New Yorkers be counted as living at their last place of residence in redistricting, Dana Rubinstein reports for The New York Times. Broadened voting access measures tend to benefit urban—and therefore more liberal—voters. And rural areas generally gain more political clout when prisoners are counted as local residents in redistricting.

Analysts say the measures were defeated because the language on the ballot was hard to understand, and because the Democratic party made little effort to boost the propositions, while the state Republican party used the ballot issues as lightning rods to turn out their base in an otherwise quiet election cycle, Rubinstein reports.

Today's census numbers show that rural America will have to fight to keep political influence in states and U.S. House

Today the Census Bureau is releasing population data for congressional and legislative redistricting which will show rural areas (which are disproportionately white and conservative) have lost people overall in the past decade, and are in line to lose power in statehouses and the U.S. House. 

"An analysis of recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates shows that "rural areas lost 226,000 people, a decline of about 0.5 percent, between 2010 and 2020, while cities and suburbs grew by about 21 million people, or 8%," Tim Henderson reports for Stateline. "Republican state legislatures will try to draw districts that preserve the political power of mostly conservative rural voters, but that task will become increasingly difficult as the population balance shifts toward cities."

Rural interests in some states have organized keep as much representation as they can, Henderson reports: "Pro 15, a group that advocates for largely rural northeastern Colorado, asked the state redistricting commission not to dilute the power of rural counties by dividing those voters into districts dominated by urban voters. Colorado’s rural counties grew 4%, a fraction of the state’s 17% urban growth, according to the census estimates."

The Census Bureau is holding a news conference at 1 p.m. ET today to discuss the first local-level results from the 2020 census, which states use to redraw federal and state legislative districts. After the presser on the Census Live page, credentialed news media can participate in a Q&A session with presenters. Click here to register for the press conference and access. The new data will be released today on the Census Bureau's FTP site, and will be released in easier-to-use formats by Sept. 30.

Quick hits: Coal states try to rescue coal-fired power plants; rural hospitals often blocked from clinical trials

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Lawmakers in Montana, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming are weighing plans to rescue coal-fired power plants; analysts say it's a sign of growing resistance in conservative, energy-producing regions against national efforts to transition to renewable energy. Read more here.

Scholars and activists are working to broaden the public's understanding of rural LGBTQ+ people. The story includes maps with state-level data on estimated rural LGBTQ+ populations. Read more here.

Some researchers say more accurate data-collection methods are needed to better understand recreational use of public lands. They say getting a more accurate picture of who frequents public lands, as well as when and why they do so, can help rural counties hone their economic development strategies. Read more here.

A coalition of hundreds of food and agriculture groups calls for an infrastructure package that meets rural needs. Read more here.

In pitching its infrastructure plan, the Biden administration is touting its benefits to rural America and Native American tribes. Read more here.

A new book does a deep dive into the Sackler family and how their company Purdue Pharma brought about the opioid epidemic with OxyContin. Read a review here.

Financial barriers can keep rural hospitals from participating in lucrative clinical trials. Read more here.

Many people who moved to Maine this past year said the pandemic was the tipping point for a decision they'd been considering for a long time. That's according to a recent survey by a non-profit focused on attracting new residents to the state, and could have implications for other rural areas trying to lure new workers. Read more here.

It's hard to plant more trees when we don't have enough seedlings. Read more here.

The pandemic exacerbated anti-Asian sentiment in rural areas. Read more here.

An emergency doctor who owned guns starting when he was a teenager weighs in on why "assault weapons" shouldn't be classified as guns. Read more here.

Everyone's hiring, but small business owners can't find qualified workers because of the pandemic and increased unemployment benefits. About a third of business owners surveyed said they had raised wages recently, and 17% said they plan to raise compensation in the next three months. Read more here.

A multimedia piece from The Washington Post explains how Congressional apportionment works, and who stands to benefit. Read more here.

Rural-urban statehouse divisions foreshadow policy fights

Blue counties got bluer and red counties got redder in the November elections, widening ideological divides as Democrats and Republicans dug in and became less likely to compromise on pressing issues in the 2021 legislative sessions, including dealing with covid-19 and budget deficits," Elaine Povich reports for Stateline. That ideological divide, often along rural-urban lines, foreshadows "the rancorous redistricting process that will set political boundaries for the next decade, particularly in states where the governor is of one party and the legislature the other."

The deepening political divide could affect a wide range of issues, from state budgets, minimum wages, marijuana, infrastructure funding, and more, Povich reports.

In Wisconsin, for example, political entrenchment is hampering pandemic response. "Democratic Gov. Tony Evers plans a new executive order requiring a mask mandate into 2021 and called on Republicans to drop a lawsuit against it," Povich reports. "Wisconsin is one of a handful of states without a statewide pandemic plan, due to GOP efforts to thwart Evers’ proposals, except for the mask mandate, so far."

Upcoming reapportionment and redistricting make statehouse races even more important this year

The nation's attention is focused largely on the presidential and Senate races, but more than 5,000 state legislative races are arguably as important, collectively, Sabrina Tavernise writes for The New York Times. For one thing, this is a census year. In most states, that means that whoever wins control of a state's legislature in this election will be in charge of "redrawing state and national electoral maps next year, an exercise that can give one political party a deep and enduring advantage in lawmaking for years." 

After their electoral gains in 2010, Republicans used their power in statehouses to disproportionately empower rural voters in redistricting. Before legislatures redistrict, the census will determine how many seats in the U.S. House each state will get.

Tavernise notes that state legislatures will also decide critical issues relating to abortion, guns, police funding and accountability, schools, health care, and the pandemic.

Census count can end early, Supreme Court rules

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration can halt the 2020 census count early, a decision that could result in hard-to-count populations in rural areas and elsewhere receiving less government funding and Congressional representation. 

"The brief unsigned order formally only pauses the population count while the administration and a host of groups advocating a more accurate census battle in a federal appeals court over whether the count could be stopped early," Adam Liptak and Michael Wines report for The New York Times. "As a practical matter, however, it almost certainly ensures an early end because the census — one of the largest government activities, involving hundreds of thousands of workers — cannot be easily restarted and little time remains before its current deadline at the end of this month. In fact, some census workers say, the bureau had already begun shutting down some parts of its count despite a court order to continue it."

The Trump administration sought to wrap up the count at the end of September, but in late September a federal judge ruled that the count had to continue until the end of October. Rural response to the census has consistently lagged, and as early as mid-April, the Census Bureau begged Congress to extend the deadline to the end of October, Zach Montellaro reports for Politico.

But Congress never granted the extensions, and in early August, Census Bureau director Steven Dillingham, a Trump appointee, announced it would withdraw its request for an extension and deliver the results to Trump by the end of 2020 (a decision that came from outside the bureau, according to the Commerce Department's inspector general).

U.S. judge orders census extension, says some populations — including rural — could lose funding and representation

A federal judge ruled late Thursday that the 2020 census count must continue through the end of October instead of wrapping up at the end of September, Zach Montellaro reports for Politico. The government is expected to appeal the ruling.

The pandemic has seriously delayed the decennial count in rural areas and other places with hard-to-count populations, heightening the risk of an inaccurate count. "As early as mid-April, just weeks into the country shuttering during the pandemic, the Census Bureau pleaded with Congress to extend deadlines for the count for 120 days," Montellaro reports. "The proposed deadlines would have pushed field collection until the end of October, with apportionment data — the population count used for determining the number and population of each state's congressional districts — being submitted to the president by April 30, 2021 instead of by years' end."

Congress never granted the extensions, and in early August, Census Bureau director Steven Dillingham, a Trump appointee, announced it would withdraw its request for an extension and deliver the results to Trump by the end of 2020 (a decision that came from outside the bureau, according to the Commerce Department's inspector general).

"The reversal infuriated municipalities, community groups and experts, who warned of the prospect of a rushed and deeply flawed count that would affect everything from House apportionment and redistricting to how roughly $1.5 trillion in federal spending would be directed over the next decade," Montellaro reports. The federal court echoed those concerns in its ruling.

Pandemic thwarts rural efforts to increase census response

Rural areas, already behind in responding to the 2020 census, are struggling to catch up before the Bureau of the Census ends counting efforts on Sept. 30, a month sooner than previously announced, Seth Bodine reports for Harvest Public Media.

Though the Census Bureau extended the deadline for self-response, it halted most of its in-person counting efforts this spring, local leaders and organizations have been trying to pick up the slack, Bodine reports. But the pandemic has made that difficult, and many report a lower response rate than normal, possibly because of lower internet access and language barriers.

An undercount could gut many small towns' ability to qualify for much-needed funding and could result in less representation for rural residents in state Houses. "More than $1.5 trillion in federal funds each year are distributed based on census data," Julia Sclafani reports for Searchlight New Mexico. "That includes funds for food assistance, childcare, Medicaid, Head Start, hospitals, schools, economic development, housing, transportation, and hundreds of other programs that benefit children, families, businesses and communities."

The Trump administration's attempt to add a citizenship question to the census has spooked many rural Hispanic immigrants, some undocumented, who fear they will be deported for filling out the census, Scalfani reports. Native Americans living in tribal lands may be undercounted as well, since many have closed entry to nonresidents in an effort to contain the pandemic; that will make in-person census campaigns difficult or impossible.

In a recent Government Executive podcast, University of Mississippi sociology professor John Green discussed the challenges facing rural communities during the 2020 census count. Click here to listen. And for a deeper dive, the Rural Health Information Hub has a toolkit with resources for those covering the 2020 census.

Join Feb. 27 Twitter chat to discuss rural health-care stakeholder strategies to maximize rural census count

The Rural Health Information Hub will host a Twitter chat at 2 p.m. ET on Feb. 27 to discuss how rural health stakeholders can help increase census turnout in their communities.

Rural areas risk being undercounted in the decennial census, which could leave them with less political representation and less federal funding. During the chat, guests will discuss challenges in reaching hard-to-count populations and strategies that can maximize census response.

The National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health (@NOSORH) will co-host the hour-long chat. You can find it by searching for the hashtag #RuralHealthChat on Twitter.

Click here for a list of participating experts and their Twitter handles, as well as ground rules for participation.

Texas GOP to launch fake campaign sites targeting Dems

"Texas Republicans plan to use a disinformation campaign to help them win back a dozen state House races in 2020, buying up website domains that look like they belong to Democratic candidates and loading the sites with negative information, according to a leaked document from the party," Andrea Zelinski reports for the Houston Chronicle. "Republicans are seeking to maintain control of the Texas House after a bruising 2018 election cycle. If Republicans lose nine seats in the 2020 elections, Democrats would take control of the chamber and have a leading role in drawing new congressional and legislative district boundaries after next year’s census."

The plan to spread misinformation through fake campaign sites is akin to recent partisan efforts to spread biased content through websites masquerading as local news sites.

Texas Republican Party Chairman James Dickey confirmed that the document was authentic, and told the Chronicle he wasn't sure why it's news that "we’re aggressively working to earn the support of all Texas voters for all our candidates," and said that the draft discusses just one of the strategies they plan to use to increase GOP voter turnout, Zelinski reports. Other strategies in the document include publishing videos that highlight diversity within the Republican party and finding ways to combat President Trump's "polarizing nature."

How 'red' or 'blue' is your congressional district?

The final numbers are in: Democrats won the total vote for the U.S. House in November 2012 by almost 1.4 million votes, 1.1 percent of the total. But the voters elected 234 Republicans and 201 Democrats, largely because Republicans controlled the redistricting process in most states following their 2010 electoral victories and drew districts that helped their candidates.

The numbers were compiled by David Wasserman, right, House editor of the Cook Political Report, the most widely respected source for non-partisan analysis of House and Senate races. For his Excel spreadsheet, in a Google Docs document, click here. It also includes the Cook Report's Partisan Voting Index for each district, which uses recent election results to measure the relative "red" or "blue" of each district.

N.Y. Times rounds up examples of rural areas losing population and power in state legislatures

Rural areas have been losing influence in Congress and state legislatures since the reapportionment and redistricting rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1960s, and the 2010 census mandates that the trend will continue. We've noted this more than once, but it's an important topic and The New York Times has done a nice job of collecting some interesting pieces of the puzzle "in states that have long been considered synonymous with rural America," as reporter A.G. Sulzberger puts it. He used an excellent source for anyone covering the issue: Tim Storey of the National Conference of State Legislatures, who told him, “It really is the next chapter in the long saga of the loss of rural political power in America.”

The story's litany begins with Nebraska, where more than half the population is now concentrated in three urban counties in the east; goes to North Dakota, where "More education money has migrated to urban schools and universities;" then to Kansas, where "Rural legislators were unable to block a transportation bill favorable to the thriving metro areas;" and finally to Georgia, where "The Atlanta region appears likely to take control of a majority in the legislature."

In Nebraska, “As political power and population shifts, the legislators are less and less tolerant of the subsidies that have been built in” for rural areas, Nebraska State Education Association research director Larry Scherer told Sulzberger. However, the power of metropolitan lawmakers "is sometimes diffused by infighting between city and suburbs or city and city — a contrast to the more monolithic rural coalitions," Sulzberger reports, quoting Lincoln Sen. Bill Avery: “We haven’t seen the creation of a strong urban identity. It takes a while for people’s attitudes and cultural orientations to catch up with the numbers.” (Read more)