America is founded on an accurate census

The Constitution framers made a national head count the first job of the federal government for a reason. Based on the count, we make some of our most consequential decisions as a society, from the states’ as a society, from the states representation in Congress to the distribution of more than $1.5 trillion in annual funding for a wide range of public programs.

The Trump administration does not want a complete count, as the law requires.

Trump has been trying to whitewash the census since the moment he took office.

Even in the best of times, counting about 330 million people is an enormous task. In the midst of a pandemic, it becomes incalculably harder.

As one longtime GOP strategist concluded in a 2015 analysis, excluding non-citizens from the census would “be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.”

After the Supreme Court poured cold water on that plan last year, Trump directed the government last month not to count undocumented immigrants for the purposes of reapportioning seats in the House of Representatives.

The latest card trick is broader: Ending the crucial in-person canvass one month early will ensure a significant undercount of minorities, as well as rural populations and other groups.

Why does an accurate and complete census matter? Because it is the anchor of representative democracy.

To date, just under 63% of American households have responded to the census. In normal years census workers would knock on as many doors as possible from the other 37%.But the pandemic arrived only weeks before the start of the count on April 1 and disrupted the plans.

The irony is that a rush to finish the counting process could hurt Trump’s own voters, too. That’s because the poorest states, which depend the most on federal funding, also tend to have lower census response rates.

And because so much federal funding is allocated to states based at least in part on census estimates, an inaccurate census doesn’t just harm people in undercounted communities. It harms everyone who lives in the same state.

Whatever happens in the election, the effects of the census will be with the country for at least another decade — a legacy that will long outlive this administration.

“We are committed to a complete and accurate 2020 census,” Dillingham said.

When Trump says the election is rigged, it could well be that it is rigged not in his favor.