Unhappy states consider census lawsuit to stop new political map
by Kerry Picket, Senior Campaign Reporter |
| May 08, 2021 06:30 AM
Population figures that decide how many congressional seats each state gets left many suspicious of the federal agency’s final report. Now some state leaders plan to sue over it.
Both parties have grievances with the Census numbers released on April 26, which found the United States to have just over 331 million people. New York, a strongly Democratic state, is set to lose a House seat, shrinking its total from 27 lawmakers in the chamber to 26. Most frustrating for New Yorkers is that the Empire State lost out on getting to keep all of its House seats by just 89 votes. Minnesota ended up the beneficiary, as it gets to keep all eight of its House seats.
Republicans, meanwhile, were disappointed that Texas only picked up two House seats due to rapid population growth and that Florida only added one. State governments in both are controlled by Republicans, and each expected to pick up an additional House seat, important elements in the party's bid for winning a majority in the chamber in the 2022 midterm elections.
House Republicans on the Oversight Committee questioned Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in a recent letter, asking why “apportionment population results released by the Census Bureau are strikingly different from the population evaluation estimates released just months ago on December 22, 2020.”
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