FACT FOCUS: DeSantis' misleading claims about why Florida missed out on a congressional seat

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Gov. Ron DeSantis says the 2020 census numbers for Florida need “fixing” in a way that would give the Sunshine State another congressional seat.

The Republican governor blamed the U.S. Census Bureau last month for shortchanging Florida following the last head count of every U.S. resident and said that the nation’s third-most populous state deserves an extra seat in the House.

The once-a-decade census figures are used to divvy up congressional seats among the 50 states in a process known as apportionment and guides the distribution of $2.8 trillion in federal spending every year. Florida gained one additional House seat after the 2020 census, raising its total to 28.

“We are going to press this issue,” DeSantis said last month at an Aug. 20 news conference. “This is something that has stuck in my craw for a number of years because I remember telling everybody that we were going to get two seats at the last census, and then when they came out with it, we only got one.”

DeSantis’ desire for the extra congressional seat is different from recent efforts by states like Texas and California to redraw their congressional districts more advantageously for their state’s dominant party. It’s also different from Republican President Donald Trump’s calling for a new, mid-decade census that would exclude people in the U.S. illegally.

Here’s a look at the facts:

DESANTIS: “Even the Biden administration acknowledged that Florida got shortchanged in the reapportionment stemming from the last census.”

THE FACTS: The Biden administration never said that. DeSantis is referring to the bureau’s post-enumeration survey, or PES, which was a self-evaluation of the quality of the once-a-decade census count, examining where there were overcounts and undercounts. The PES released in 2022 by the bureau's career statisticians and demographers during the Biden administration showed that Florida had an undercount of almost 3.5%, meaning around 761,000 residents were missed. An analysis by Election Data Services shows the Sunshine State needed only around 171,500 more residents to gain an extra seat.

Five other states had undercounts like Florida — Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. Eight state had overcounts: Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island and Utah. Undercounts signal people were missed, and the populations which are typically hardest to count include children, people who don't speak English, racial and ethnic minorities and people without stable housing. Overcounts suggest they were counted more than once, as for example, children of divorced parents who share custody or people with vacation homes.

DESANTIS: “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but every state that shortchanged was a Republican state, and every state that got more was a Democratic state. That is just the truth.”

THE FACTS: That’s not true. Illinois, which was undercounted, is led by Democrats. Ohio and Utah, where Republicans dominate, were overcounted.

But there are several reasons for Florida’s undercount. Florida, along with Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas, did not provide as many resources as most other states in encouraging residents to fill out census forms. DeSantis brushed off early calls to form a state committee aimed at mobilizing participation, and he only announced the formation of an unfunded committee in January 2020, just weeks before the start of the count. New York allocated $60 million, and California spent a whopping $187 million, by comparison.

At the time of the census, Hispanics made up more than a quarter of Florida’s population and almost 40% of Texas residents. Critics said that the failed efforts of the first Trump administration to add a citizenship question to the census form may have had a chilling effect on the participation of Hispanics, immigrants and others. The 2020 census also faced unprecedented obstacles from a pandemic, hurricanes and wildfires, social unrest and efforts by the Trump administration to end the count early.

DESANTIS: “If we just take that (the PES undercount) and apply it, Florida would have at least one more seat. That’s just the truth.”

THE FACTS: While it’s mathematically true that the undercount numbers would be enough for another seat, the overcount and undercount numbers can’t be used to change how many congressional seats are allocated among the states. The U.S. Constitution requires an actual count, or “enumeration,” — not a sample like what is used in the PES — to apportion the population as equally as possible into the nation's 435 House districts.

“Under the Constitution, you can’t reassign congressional seats as DeSantis would apparently like based on something that is not an actual enumeration,” said Thomas Saenz, president of MALDEF, a Latino civil rights organization.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, a former chief of staff for DeSantis, seemed to acknowledge this in a letter to the U.S. Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, saying “steps must be taken now to right these wrongs.” Uthmeier, a former senior adviser to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in the first Trump administration, proposed that the bureau should use the “knowledge” gained from the PES to conduct “a tailored and streamlined manual recount.”

When asked to explain what that meant, Uthmeier’s press secretary Jae Williams said in an email, “the Attorney General’s letter speaks for itself.”

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