The last time we checked in on Newsmax columnist Mark Schulte, he was spreading coronavirus conspiracy theories so wacky that Newsmax felt compelled to add a disclaimer to his columns that he is a “non-clinician.” Perhaps Newsmax also needs to note that Schulte is also not a statistician, because he’s now trying to develop conspiracy theories about census numbers.
In his April 29 column, Schulte declared that “Tallies for five heavily populated, Democratic-controlled states – New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Jersey – are worthy of scrutiny for several reasons” — which mainly come down to Schulte believing that the populations of those “dystopian” states have supposedly increased too much.He also pronounced the census statistics to be “egregiously flawed.”
Schulte huffed further in his May 4 column (needless bolding and italics in original):
By contrast, the combined population of four heavily-populated, thriving Republican states — Texas, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina — leaped from 59,874,000 in 2010 to 68,241,000 in 2019. This is an 8,367,000 gain, or 14% over nine years, or 1.6% yearly.
But the Census Bureau is preposterously claiming that these Republican mega-states only increased by a combined microscopic 126,000 residents between July 1, 2019 and April 1, 2020: from 68,241,000 to 68,367,000, or two-tenths of 1%.
This improbably feeble growth, over nine months, extrapolates to 168,000 for one year, or two-tenths of 1%.
[…]To summarize: The 2020 Census tallies for the 50 states are not only suspiciously high for five Democratic-controlled mega-states, but also anomalously low for four Republican ones.
Schulte seems to be overlooking a couple things: First ,that the census is conducted only every 10 years, and that numbers in between those official census counts are just estimates, and second, Republican scare tactics may have led Hispanics to avoid census counts, leading to an apparent undercount in Republican-led states with a large Hispanic population.
Even though several Republican-led states are already getting additional congressional seats based on the preliminary census numbers, Schulte spent his May 12 column demanding even more:
But how does Texas, whose population soared by 4.04 million residents, receive only two more House seats?
And how does Florida, whose population jumped by 2.77 million, receive only one more seat?
[…]Arizona is the third Republican mega-state that should have been awarded one more seat in the highly suspicious 2021 reapportionment. Between April 1, 2010, and July 1, 2019, its population soared by 887,000 residents: from 6,392,000 to 7,279,000, or 97,000 annually.
Calculating this 97,000-yearly increase for the nine months between July 1, 2019, and April 1, 2020, yields 73,000.
If we add these missing Arizonians, to the 7,279,000 counted in July 2019, the sum is 7,352,000, which if divided by 761,000, yields 9.7 seats, which rounds up to 10 seats, and not the allotted 9 seats.
However, the demographically-inept Census Bureau is reporting that Arizona’s population dropped by 120,000, from 7,279,000 to 7,159,000, between July 2019 and April 2020.
Again, Schulte is ignoring that between-census numbers are estimates and GOP scare tactics, showing that he’s the one who’s “demographically inept.”
And on May 17, Schulte ranted that sparsely populated states have too much congressional representation:
But the nation’s highest court has not ruled on the constitutionality of the colossal disparities in the number of residents per seat among the 50 states, which flagrantly discriminates against the mega-populated states.
Moreover, America’s most populous states are already monumentally underrepresented by the constitutional mandate that every state has two seats in the U.S. Senate.
Wyoming, whose 578,000 residents are the nation’s smallest population, has 289,000 per U.S. Senate seat. California, with 39,577,000 people, has 19,789,000 per Senate seat, or 68 times that of Wyoming.
Indeed, the 26 states with the smallest populations, which range from Wyoming’s 578,000 to Louisiana’s 4,661,000, have a total population of only 58 million, or just 17.5% of the nation’s 331 million people.
Of course, if the proportion was more accurately reflective of the U.S. population, it’s likely that Democrats would have more congressional representation. We presume Schulte doesn’t actually want that.