OPINION

BRENDA BLAGG: Virus infects census count

Trump’s handling of crisis front and center for election

Could the timing of the coronavirus pandemic have been worse?

Probably. But there is a case to be made that 2020, which is both a critical presidential election year and time for a decennial census, is about as bad as the timing could be in the United States.

Long before the coronavirus began its spread here, the 2020 elections were going to be among the most important in this nation's history.

The election had been seen as an impending clash between the different sides in a severely divided nation, a battle of such political consequence that democracy itself was on the ballot.

Then covid-19 came, raising the stakes.

President Donald Trump, embattled throughout his presidency, is now all the more challenged in his bid for re-election.

This is a president who was impeached last year by the U.S. House of Representatives. Yet, his impeachment and his subsequent acquittal in a U.S. Senate trial now pale in comparison to what's happened since covid-19 began spreading in this country.

Trump's presidency may be most severely judged by voters for his ineptitude in response to the pandemic that has so far claimed more than 56,000 American lives and infected almost a million of us.

Those not directly impacted by the virus have surely been touched by the parallel economic upheaval that has cost many millions more Americans their livelihoods.

The ballot might as well pit Donald Trump against "not Donald Trump," so strong is the upcoming referendum on this pandemic-scarred presidency.

Last week's lunacy from Trump, his musings about injecting disinfectant into the human body to fight covid-19, only worsened his electoral challenge.

It will come from former Vice President Joe Biden, the likely Democratic nominee.

Biden already has the convention votes lined up, as does the incumbent Republican Trump for his nominating convention.

Mind you, the conventions, in Milwaukee for the Democrats and Charlotte for the Republicans, won't happen until August. Yet the virus threatens to turn one or both into virtual gatherings.

How that might impact the presidential race is a subject for later discussion, but it is one more factor in this uncertain world of pandemic politics.

The uncertainty will extend well beyond this election year, if for no reason other than the pandemic's effect on the 2020 U.S. Census.

That critical population count, required every 10 years by the Constitution, has been hampered by the virus. The Census Bureau has delayed in-person enumeration, which threatens an undercount.

Census takers won't start knocking on doors of people who haven't answered the questionnaire for months yet. Field operations are to continue through October, restricting the time left to pull all the numbers together and report them to the Congress.

An undercount has all kinds of ramifications for the decade to follow, potentially shorting different states and localities in per capita federal funding and misguiding public and private decision-making.

The undercounted population will still be there. Their needs will have to be met, just without the proper allocation of resources in the decade to come.

An even more immediate problem relates to the decennial reapportionment of the U.S. House of Representatives, of state legislatures and local governing bodies.

That chore follows the completion of the census, which is supposed to be delivered at the end of this year. The Census Bureau has, however, asked Congress to delay the delivery date to April 30, 2021, to allow a more complete count.

That four-month delay would in turn disrupt the timing for redrawing all the political jurisdictions -- for Congress as well as for the state legislatures and local governing bodies.

The Census Department would get redistricting data to the states by the end of July 2021, instead of the end of March 2021.

So what?

The time for redrawing districts, a difficult chore under the best of circumstances, will be drastically compressed.

The goal, of course, is equal representation within all these jurisdictions. Redistricting plans often end up being challenged in court, further complicating the process.

The proposed timing to start that process is particularly troubling for New Jersey and Virginia, which have elections in 2021 for legislators who are supposed to be elected from newly drawn districts. New Jersey's scheduled primaries are supposed to happen even before the census data would be delivered.

In Arkansas and other states, the next round of elections will come in 2022. But primaries fall early in the year for some.

These hastened apportionment decisions for all states will lend themselves to even more heavy-handed political influence on the process than is usual.

And that almost certainly would mean increased legal challenges to how the different boundaries are drawn.

The process is never easy but it is all the more difficult when plagued by a pandemic.

Commentary on 04/29/2020

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