Arkansas may need a special session to deal with congressional redistricting, according to Sen. Jason Rapert, R-Conway, chair of the Senate State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee. Sen. Rapert made his comments in an interview with Talk Business & Politics.
The legislature’s state agencies committees redraw congressional district lines every 10 years after the census is taken to account for population shifts and numerically-balanced representation. The Board of Apportionment — which consists of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state — redraws the 100 House districts and 35 Senate districts every decade. Republicans will control both of those redistricting tasks for the first time in the modern political era.
Talk Business & Politics reports putting the blame squarely on the U.S. Census Bureau and the Biden administration, Rapert says he’s not convinced the delay in population data is due to the pandemic, which hamstrung the ability to collect census info.
He says the efforts to identify illegal immigrants, who are attempted to be counted in the census, is the reason he’s hearing that data may not be available until September. It is typically provided in January of the year following the census but was already pushed back to April before a newly announced delay until September.
“I’m very disappointed in the United States Census Bureau and the Biden administration. We were pending the release of that information in January. If you go look closely at the reports in the news in this arena, the brakes suddenly got put on as it related to expanding to include the count for illegal immigrants,” he says.
“The announcement that it would be somewhat late in maybe April was one thing. It’s almost unacceptable for them to announce they’re going to be at the end of September. It probably is unacceptable because this is now putting states around the country in great danger of not being able to finish their redistricting in time for the elections [of 2022],” Rapert adds.
The census has been a political football for more than two years as the Trump administration in 2018 changed previous precedent to include block-level citizenship data on questionnaires. Supporters of the move said it would be a true count of legal citizens, while critics complained not counting illegal immigrants would take away representation and government resources for some communities as well as provide a Census undercount. The Constitution calls for an “actual enumeration” of everyone living in the U.S., although it originally excluded slaves and Indians.
Rapert says he has spoken to Arkansas’ congressional delegation and hopes they will put pressure on or provide more resources to the U.S. Census Bureau to speed up the process. He’s also planning to introduce a non-binding resolution in the 93rd General Assembly calling on an expedition of the process.
“I’ve already told our committee more than once we could be conducting a special session,” Rapert says.
He’s not sure if using 2019 Census estimates would withstand potential legal challenges if lawmakers use that data.
“I want us to do the job right, and I want us to do the job fairly. And what needs to happen is the Census Bureau needs to work around the clock and get the job done. You had one job to do, and you need to do it,” Rapert says.
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