The Trump administration's successful push to end the census count earlier than planned could hit some struggling areas in the St. Louis region, effectively costing $1,300 in programs and services for every uncounted resident. The strategy of disenfranchisement is unmistakable by a White House that views urban America as un-American.

The U.S. counts its population every 10 years to determine each state's number of congressional seats (which in turn determines the state's electoral votes), along with allocation of federal resources for local governments, infrastructure funding, low-income programs and much more. Getting an accurate count is not only mandated by the Constitution, it's crucial to American civic life at every level. This is why the administration's repeated attempts to undermine the current census count are so dangerous.

First, the White House attempted to get a citizenship question put on census forms. The effect was to scare undocumented immigrants (and even legal residents who have undocumented relatives) away from answering the census. When the Supreme Court nixed that scheme, the administration responded by ordering the census to simply not count non-citizens. That move, which is being challenged in court, isn't the commonsense policy it might sound like. The Constitution orders the counting not of citizens but of "persons," which would encompass all inhabitants regardless of immigration or citizenship status.

An artificially low count for urban areas, where immigrants tend to live, would serve the Republican administration's goals because those are also where Democrats tend to live. Diminishing those counts means the ability to deny representation and resources to parts of the country President Donald Trump knows don't support him or his party.

The Supreme Court ruled that the administration could end the census count last Friday instead of the original scheduled end date of Oct. 31. Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, meaning the clear majority of conservatives and liberals on the court agreed on the administration's power to stop the count early.

The administration had once sought to end the count on Sept. 30, but lower-court rulings prevented it until last week. Some say that, as a practical matter, the loss of two weeks' worth of counting might not have much impact since the census has been under way for months. There no real way to know for sure, especially in troubled urban areas like East St. Louis, where getting a full count is difficult in the best of circumstances, much less during a pandemic.

"We are concerned (that) citizens in the hundreds- or thousands-range are not going to be counted," Sarah Joshway, the city's census point person, told the Post-Dispatch's Janelle O'Dea. "It's been a challenge."

Challenging the residents of blue-state America, instead of representing them, has been on Trump's agenda from the start. The only chance to change that is via the counting that starts on Nov. 3.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

Photo credit: MarkThomas at Pixabay