So tabulating the census has become a mechanism for political manipulation, particularly more recently, with the U.S. Census having become weaponized by partisan political tactics (for example, many Republicans would like to hijack it to dictate congressional representation and quantities of federal funding). The census, conducted just once every decade, is used to apportion how many seats each state receives in the House of Representatives and how hundreds of billions of dollars in federal money flow to neighborhoods, towns and states. The reasons they are tampering with census data or the redistricting process can have huge consequences for the balance of political power.
Exclusion of Undocumented Immigrants
One of the most prominent Republican projects has been to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census count used to reapportion congressional seats. In January 2025, Donald Trump, having won the presidency four years earlier, issued an executive order rescinding the Biden-era order defining the apportionment base as including all residents (regardless of immigration status). The move reflects past attempts during Trump’s first term to exclude noncitizens from census counts, including a failed attempt to place a citizenship question on the 2020 census, an effort that the Supreme Court struck down. The executive order has reignited debate over whether undocumented immigrants should be represented in Congress.
Redirecting: Mapmaking and Redistricting and Gerrymandering
The census data is also directly tied to redistricting — the process of redrawing the boundaries of electoral districts. Republicans have done this for a long time through gerrymandering, manipulating the design of districts to be favorable to themselves. So, in North Carolina, there was a Republican consultant, Thomas Hofeller, who had helped create maps that gave Republicans a vast advantage. His work was also involved in the drawing of districts that diluted the voting strength of minority populations, enhancing Republican representation. And the documents released after Hofeller’s death indicated that his work in the state was part of broader efforts to ensure that Republican candidates would win the maximum number of its seats, raising new questions about fairness and integrity in the redistricting process.
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Impact on Political Representation
Leaving out undocumented immigrants and partisan gerrymandering has serious consequences for political representation. Excluding undocumented immigrants from the census count could lead to misrepresentation for individual states — particularly those with a large population of immigrants — with a bearing on both their representation in Congress and the allocation of federal money. Moreover, gerrymandering can distort electoral maps that fail to affirm the valid will of the people, and that does so at the expense of the democratic ideal of equal representation.
Legal and Public Backlash
Those efforts have received substantial legal pushback and public criticism. Judges have thrown out a number of gerrymandered maps on grounds that they run counter to the Constitution. The Supreme Court, for example, found in 2019, in Rucho v. Common Cause, that federal courts do not have jurisdiction to hear claims of partisan gerrymandering and said solving them was up to the states and their courts. There has also been strong public backlash against such practices, with many viewing them as efforts to subvert democracy and solidify power.
The numbers behind the plan that Republican Party leaders have banked on to revive the process for updating the nation’s census and redistricting processes so that it works as to their political advantage are make-or-break numbers, examples of a blend of demographic data and political strategy. These efforts may be intended to boost Republican representation, but they also pose profound challenges to the fairness and integrity of the electoral process itself. And these court cases, other legal challenges and shifting public opinion are going to have a fundamental effect on the future of American democracy.
Leaving out undocumented immigrants and partisan gerrymandering has serious consequences for political representation. Excluding undocumented immigrants from the census count could lead to misrepresentation for individual states — particularly those with a large population of immigrants — with a bearing on both their representation in Congress and the allocation of federal money. Moreover, gerrymandering can distort electoral maps that fail to affirm the valid will of the people, and that does so at the expense of the democratic ideal of equal representation.
Legal and Public Backlash
Those efforts have received substantial legal pushback and public criticism. Judges have thrown out a number of gerrymandered maps on grounds that they run counter to the Constitution. The Supreme Court, for example, found in 2019, in Rucho v. Common Cause, that federal courts do not have jurisdiction to hear claims of partisan gerrymandering and said solving them was up to the states and their courts. There has also been strong public backlash against such practices, with many viewing them as efforts to subvert democracy and solidify power.
The numbers behind the plan that Republican Party leaders have banked on to revive the process for updating the nation’s census and redistricting processes so that it works as to their political advantage are make-or-break numbers, examples of a blend of demographic data and political strategy. These efforts may be intended to boost Republican representation, but they also pose profound challenges to the fairness and integrity of the electoral process itself. And these court cases, other legal challenges and shifting public opinion are going to have a fundamental effect on the future of American democracy.
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