How The 2020 Census Could Doom American Democracy

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There's Less Manpower And Way Less Money

Traditionally, census data is gathered in two ways: forms are mailed to people's homes, and if those don't get a response, a volunteer pays them a visit to get their data. In recent censuses, however, we're seeing a lot fewer people returning their postal forms. The mail-in response rate for the 2010 census, for instance, was only 63 percent. Which means that we're becoming increasingly reliant on house calls. Now, the 2010 census spent a lot of energy recruiting volunteers from vulnerable, underrepresented, and/or marginalized communities to give them an "in" that could result in a more accurate count. But due to massive budget cuts, we're going to have 200,000 fewer volunteers walking the streets for the 2020 census. So each volunteer is going to be dealing with a significantly larger share of the country's demographic of fucking crazy people, and we're also going to be missing huge swathes of the population because there'll be no one to follow up with them.

Michael/Adobe StockThis doesn't even factor in the 57 hours it takes to get from one house to the next in Wyoming.

This is a bad thing for a census.

The census, believe it or not, isn't just some tedious government box-ticking exercise. It's incredibly important in deciding how federal funds are distributed among states for things like welfare programs, healthcare, schools, public housing, and infrastructure. Ironically, Congress has been underfunding the Census Bureau itself for the last several years, which has impacted efforts to test and roll out plans for the 2020 census. In 2018, Congress finally gave them a decent budget ... but only enough to provide the "minimum resources needed to prepare for its constitutional mandate." In other words, enough money to do the absolute minimum to ensure that the founding fathers don't rise from their graves and beat Wilbur Ross' ass.

It's all sounding pretty grim so far, but good news! There's an online system that's going to solve all of these problems!

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There's A New Online System That Should Worry ... Everybody

The Census Bureau is hoping that they'll be able to mitigate some of their many, many shortfalls by giving people the ability to fill out their census forms online. To that end, every household will be sent a postcard containing a unique code they can use to get on the census website, which is a tragic misunderstanding of everything internet.

It doesn't help that nobody wants to commit any money to make sure this thing actually works (*cough*). Those pesky aforementioned budget cuts mean that the system hasn't been tested in any meaningful way. Of the three live tests the Census Bureau planned for the system, two had to be scrapped. But hey, one out of three ain't bad.

U.S. Census BureauOh wait, yes, that is objectively and provably bad.

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The New Citizenship Question Is Seriously Ominous

One major addition to the 2020 census is the question "Is this person a citizen of the United States?"

That's obviously worrying to a lot of folks. It doesn't add anything of real value to the census, because not only is this information already gathered by the American Community Survey, but also a count of an area's citizens vs. non-citizens doesn't matter when it comes to allocating federal funding at a state level. It only serves to dissuade non-citizens from answering by playing off their already-present fear of ICE hit squads.

John Moore/Getty ImagesIceholes, if you will.

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The Census Might Be Used To Rig Future Elections

The census also underpins how voting districts are drawn and how the Electoral College works. After the last two years, you do not need to be reminded of how important those things are. The ultimate consequence of a screwy census, then, is a screwy vote -- funnily enough, to the total advantage of the GOP. It's not a coincidence that this census (and some of the ones before it) works so hard to disenfranchise immigrant, minority, and low-income voters through fear of deportation, restriction of access, and the breakdown of favorable local knowledge. Those groups not only all traditionally favor liberal parties, but those demographics mostly cluster in cities, aka liberal strongholds.

By allowing significant undercounts to occur in these areas, the GOP effectively kneecaps the power of blue states in the Electoral College, which act according to the results of the census by keeping elector numbers at the same level, even if more are warranted. Or worse, removing electors in favor of "faster-growing states" ... and what party do you think those states represent?

Scott Olson/Getty ImagesHint: They're the ones that are counting all of their people.