Florida Politics’ Sunburn newsletter today published a tweet from Mary Ellen Klas, politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and the former Miami Herald Capitol Bureau Chief:
@MaryEllenKlas: If Florida had an undercount that was absolutely the fault of the (Gov. Ron) DeSantis administration — which for months said it would play no role in the Census count and then in Jan. 2020, scrambled to do outreach with little preparation. Three months later, COVID.
What did Gov. Ron DeSantis say about the 2020 Census in 2019?
The Tampa Bay Times reported in June 2019 that Gov. DeSantis stated that Florida would not take an active role in ensuring an accurate count for the upcoming 2020 Census. His remarks came as the nation awaited a Supreme Court ruling on the inclusion of a citizenship question in the Census.
- “The federal government does that. We don’t have a role in it,” he said. “They administer it, and they should administer it how they see fit.”
Times Change
Five years later, the governor decries the inaccuracy of the 2020 Census.
Last week, Gov. DeSantis announced his support for an update to the 2020 Census, which might yield additional congressional seats for Florida. He said, “Even the Biden administration acknowledged that Florida got shortchanged in the reapportionment stemming from the last census. My office is working with Attorney General Uthmeier in our mission to secure Floridians’ due representation in Congress and to fix mistakes that have been identified in the aftermath of the 2020 Census.”
Governor DeSantis was joined at the press event in Lake Worth by Attorney General James Uthmeier, who said, “Florida was robbed by the left’s multi-year effort to rig the 2020 Census, and Floridians didn’t get the representation they deserve in Congress. President Trump called for a new census, and I’m ready to work with Governor DeSantis to bring solutions to the president and get it done.”
According to the governor, the updated data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 Post-Enumeration Survey shows that Florida was one of the most undercounted states during the 2020 Decennial Census. Florida’s population in 2020 was undercounted by nearly 3.5% according to PES data. Additionally, Florida has gained nearly 2 million new residents since 2019, many of whom are not accounted for by the Census Bureau’s initial 2020 reports. All of these factors display how Florida is vastly underrepresented in Congress under the Census Bureau’s current apportionment.
The road to tyranny is paved with bumbling short cuts and criminal cheats to keep yourself in power.