America’s most populous states filed last-minute requests to update their 2020 census figures before last month’s deadline to try and goose their numbers higher, Fox News reported.
The reasons states gave for requesting a correction included uncounted prison inmates (Texas), the misassigned crew of an aircraft carrier (California), and uncounted college students (New York).
In total, over a dozen states and cities submitted appeals to the census figures that help to determine the number of congressional districts and the annual allocation of $2.8 trillion in federal funding.
Almost 200 requests for corrections were filed through the US Census Bureau’s two programs that allow governments to request that their populations be reviewed and corrected. The requests came from states, municipalities, and tribal governments.
If an appeal is successful, the corrections will only be applied to the future population estimates used in determining federal funding for the remainder of the decade. The population adjustments would not change how many congressional districts each state has been allotted, nor can they be used to redraw congressional districts.
In its report, Fox itemizes some of the more unusual reasons given for requesting a correction to the census.
In California, sailors aboard an aircraft carrier may have been counted among the population of the wrong city due to the location of the carrier’s slip.
The 5,000 sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln were incorrectly included in the population of San Diego when they should have been included in the population of National City, where the Naval Base San Diego is located.
California is also arguing that nearly 10,000 prison inmates and college students were also overlooked in the 2020 census due to counting complications caused by the pandemic lockdowns.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s office submitted an appeal claiming that the census estimate missed nearly 2 percent of the state’s population by omitting people living in nursing homes, homeless shelters, college dorms, treatment facilities, and jails.
