Census data’s in, but state’s redistricting work to lag

The U.S. Census Bureau released its 2020 raw data figures on Thursday, but state officials say they have a long way to go before they are ready to publish maps for redistricting this year.

Shelby Johnson, geographic information officer for the Arkansas Geographic Information Systems Office, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Thursday that it likely will take about 10 days to process the census information.

“The software provider that provides the redistricting software that we are using to support the Board of Apportionment will download the Arkansas file when it’s published by the Census Bureau,” he said. “When it’s processed and ready for use in their redistricting software, then we will update our software that is ready to use that format.”

The state Board of Apportionment redraws legislative districts based on population changes. Congressional districts are redrawn by the state Legislature.

Johnson said the board is optimistic that the software vendor will be able to make the information readable fairly soon, but doesn’t want to make any promises.

“It’s a lot of data and big files,” he said. “We don’t want to rush them on quality control.”

Census officials indicated earlier this year that the data, in a usable format, wouldn’t be delivered to all states until Sept. 30.

Johnson said Ohio filed a lawsuit requesting earlier delivery of the information and,

as part of a settlement, census officials agreed to make the data available using an older format to expedite the process.

“The final format is really just what I would call the user-friendly format that allows people to search, access and analyze the date via their website,” he said. “The legacy file that we have received is a series of databases, tables and files. Those databases have to be linked together to create the database that can be used by the software.”

The census data released last week won’t immediately be available for public consumption.

“People won’t be able to see this online unless they have the GIS software that can read those formats,” he said. “We would publish it for those who have GIS software, but initially we won’t be able to make it user-friendly.”

Johnson said the Board of Apportionment likely will begin the redistricting process as soon as it has the updated data on the software.

“I hate to predict that data, but I would like to begin in the next couple of weeks,” he said.

Betty Dickey, coordinator of the Board of Apportionment and former Arkansas chief justice, told those at the hearing held Thursday at Phillips County Community College in Helena-West Helena that the board was far behind the timeline. The reason is that the census data normally is delivered much earlier in the year after the population count takes place.

“We are already behind the curve,” she said. “The Senate and House maps were already completed at this time in 2011. We expect the work to be done by Dec. 31.”

In 2010, the Board of Apportionment had from February until July to work on redistricting, but because of the lateness of the census information, the board this year is under a time crunch.

“Part of the delay stems from the fact that we had the pandemic,” Johnson said. “The time when the Census Bureaus was supposed to be doing nonresponse follow-ups was during the height of the pandemic. Along with their workforce being affected and some of them working remotely and lawsuits being litigated over different questions with the census, there was just a big delay.”

Lawsuits were filed last year to challenge orders from then-President Donald Trump that directed the Census Bureau to gather citizenship information about every U.S. resident and also attempted to exclude people illegally in the country from the numbers used to determine the number of congressional seats for each state, according to The Associated Press.

President Joe Biden rescinded both orders in one of his first acts.

The board has been using annual county estimates by the Census Bureau to make estimates on redistricting. He said his office also has been using a nine-year population change map.

“Using the 2019 estimates is something we came up with to give the board and the public an idea to see where things have changed,” he said. “To show them how out of balance or imbalanced the current districts are.”

The 2019 estimates showed large growth in Northwest Arkansas, but losses across the Delta region. That was confirmed by figures released Thursday by the Census bureau.

Several Arkansas residents have voiced concerns about how the pandemic, the litigation and the delays might have skewed the numbers.

“There is a small population that is undercounted every decade, but the way our statutes read, we are required to use these census numbers,” Johnson said.