Editor's note: John Marion, of Common Cause Rhode Island, will have a rebuttal of this piece in the upcoming edition of The Breeze.
It turns out that Rhode Island held onto its second congressional seat because we failed to do the count correctly during the 2020 census. In other words, we over-counted by a whopping 5 percent, or 55,000 people, and do not actually have the population required to qualify for representation by two members of Congress. We are only entitled to one.
This is a huge mistake, but so far, those most involved with the 2020 census have chosen to make excuses and point fingers instead of acknowledge that something clearly went very wrong in the process.
They blame COVID. They blame Republicans. They blame the Trump administration.
COVID was certainly a complicating factor, but 37 states had no problems with their count and were also dealing with COVID. Mostly blue states had overcounts and red states had undercounts, so while we held on to a congressional seat by counting people who don’t exist, Florida and Texas may have lost seats because they failed to count people who do exist. It is a striking trend.
Former Central Falls mayor and current candidate for state treasurer, James Diossa, co-chaired the Complete the Count committee that Gov. Raimondo created via executive order in 2018. His co-chair was Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott before she had become a household name. Diossa’s reaction to news of the overcount is especially disappointing; he expresses great pride in what he and the committee accomplished, does not acknowledge any failure, and highlights the benefit of having two seats in Congress as if there is no ethical problem with holding onto a seat based on an artificially inflated count. He characterizes everyone upset about the overcount as the “radical Rhode Island GOP” and takes a shot at the Trump administration. How original.
Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea also put out a statement in which she lays the blame at the feet of the Trump administration.
It is true that census workers are technically federal employees, but each state is tasked with putting together a team and coming up with a process to do the count. The federal government funds those efforts. The 2020 Census started under Trump and ended under Biden. Trump’s effort to add a citizenship question to the census form, which was ultimately shot down by the courts, absolutely did add a layer of concern that we could end up with an under-count if undocumented residents were too afraid to fill out the form. That understandable concern, which was at a fever pitch in our state, likely played a role in the overcount.
Census workers used gift cards and cash to incentivize people to complete the census survey but there was nothing in place to keep people from filling it out more than once. By the time the count numbers were submitted, Biden had taken office and since the Commerce Department is in charge of the census, the responsibility now belonged to Gina Raimondo and her team. They were responsible for identifying duplicates and it appears that they completely fell down on the job. I’m pretty sure we haven’t heard a mea culpa from Raimondo and the Commerce Department either.
A quick scan of the members of the Complete the Count committee leaves the impression that it was not a bipartisan effort. It doesn’t appear to have any Republicans on it. That may be significant as the groupthink around fear of an undercount could have led to a de-emphasis on making sure that people understood they could only fill out the census form one time. Either way, a committee that does not represent both parties makes for bad optics, especially now that we know about the overcount.
So, while our congressional representation will remain the same, however unethical and dishonest that may be, our federal funding will likely decrease to be brought in line with our declining population.
It remains troubling, though unsurprising, that nobody is willing to acknowledge the role they played in this massive mistake. I certainly didn’t hear anyone applauding the Trump administration when they thought they got the count right.
Sanzi is the director of outreach at Parents Defending Education and a former educator and school committee member. She writes at Sanzi.substack.com.
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(13) comments
Ms. Sanzi, this is an “excellent” article! Our Country has become such a mess since the last presidential election [2020] that the present administration is at a complete “loss” regarding its governmental activities----due to their incompetent leadership! They will never admit the “mess” they've made since having been elected. Thus, the Left can't refrain from blaming Pres. Trump for everything which has gone astray in our Country. In plain English, they don't want to accept any responsibility for having created the conditions which America's citizens are presently suffering...and there's a lot more to come!
It is my opinion, there will also be more “fraudulent elections” in the future, but there is still hope and a chance that the issues-at-hand will/could be rectified----possibly in the upcoming November election. We, the Conservatives, will never be receiving any “mea culpas” from the Left because that administration only knows how to “blame” the Conservatives. Enough said. Amen!
Pauline: Trump lost the 2020 election. His ego was bruised and millions of people boost him up by ignoring the truth.
TDS
This is an irresponsible column with an especially egregious headline. While Ms Sanzi is entitled to her opinion, she presents too much here as fact.
Have you read your own comments?
Did you see your previous comment?
Where did my comment go? It was up for maybe 30 seconds. I don't think I broke any rules. Is the Valley Breeze censoring any people who disagree with their columnists?
Presented without a single citation or source. Sorry, you get an 'F'.
Show me the data. "It turns out" isn't a persuasive factual source! As someone who worked the 2010 census and the 2018 census test here in Providence County, I believe that if anything there would have been an undercount. Anecdotally, I found the refusal rate in the census test to be much higher than in the 2010 census. General hostility toward the government and government workers was also quite high in 2018. I felt sorry for the census workers who had to go out again two years later to try to collect data from the angry, suspicious, and hostile people who had so recently repeatedly refused to give any information. Many people refused to give any information at all, refusing even a basic headcount for the residence. There were veiled (and not-so-veiled) threats and aggressive dogs. Sometimes you could get a neighbor to give a headcount, but more often they'd also refuse, saying, "I don't want to get involved." An overcount seems unlikely to me.
Maybe Ms. Sanzi should assist the Census takers in the next count and she will recognize the difficulty in establishing a correct count. As the census survey usually goes to each household, it is highly unlikely that everyone in that household has the ability to fill in the correct information due to language barriers, fear or the inability to even comprehend the questions. Couple all of those factors with people not opening doors, vicious dogs, etc., in my estimation, even an over count of 100,000 may not even approximate the true number of people living in RI. Ms. Sanzi finds that her “truths,” are the only real facts. I look forward to reading the rebuttal that will be more factual representation of the issue.
For a supposed educator, Ms Sanzi is misrepresenting the facts. The study she references is by no means definitive. I guess information from the Biden administration is ok as long as it supports her cause. Will the prior census count be used to try and ‘financially encourage’ the representation to allow more charter schools?
Why is it that mistakes are ALWAYS to their advantage ? Their shouldn't be a election for a person we don't need.
I wish you hadn't so often referred to this overcount as a "mistake." It was intentional.
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