Hidden Figures: How Donald Trump Is Rigging The Census

The US census, which takes places every 10 years, is scheduled to begin on April 1, 2020. This investigative piece by Mother Jones shows that the Trump administration is rigging the census for political benefit.

In 2010, the Census Bureau admitted to overcounting white residents by nearly one percent. They failed to count 1.5 million people of color, including Hispanics, blacks, and Native Americans. Mexican immigrants were especially undercounted because the bureau didn’t know where they lived or because multiple families lived in one household. In undercounting the immigrants, the Trump administration is hoping to reduce political representation.

In states like California, which has a large immigration population, the Justice Department has proposed the inclusion of the “citizenship question”. Civil rights groups say that this move will cause many undocumented immigrants to avoid responding to the census for fear of being reported to immigration authorities.

“But with the Trump administration in charge, voting rights advocates fear the undercount could be amplified, shifting economic resources and political power toward rural, white, and Republican communities,” writes reporter Ari Berman.

The census is scheduled to begin in the middle of the presidential election season. “Of all the ways democracy is threatened under President Donald Trump, an unfair and inaccurate census could have the most dramatic long-term impact,” he writes.

This massive undercount of the Latino population will have a great impact, leading to reduced political power and federal resources for places with a high immigrant population. But most importantly, “Trump, who won the white vote by 20 points in 2016, would stand to gain politically if the census were manipulated to slow that shift.”