By: Clayton Wood, Contributing Writer
Yesterday I enjoyed a great day skiing with friends. It was a gift of a day, and I was especially thankful for watching my kids improve.
We were at a place with a small tradition that delights kids and adults alike. Free cookies are brought out on trays.
There is real theater to it. Workers in chef hats. Kids gathering around. Ski school instructors organizing the crowd and moving people along.
No one is in danger of being harmed over a cookie. But that little crowd is a perfect picture of the sinful human heart and an important lesson in public policy.
My kids, with parents nearby who care about them and who have taught them that even when we are not watching, God is, followed the instructions. One cookie. Thank you. Step aside so others can have one.
A young man walked up and asked, “Can I just grab the cookies myself?” The woman said no.
Then he asked, “Can I have five?” Again, she said no, just one.
So he kept circling back. As she placed cookies into his open hand as quickly as possible, he slipped them behind his back into his other hand, stacking them up. Six cookies. Laughing with his friend.
Now God was watching. And while it irritated a justice-minded guy like me, I did not intervene. The cookie police is not my calling.
But the lesson matters.
Absent punishment, people will take more and more, even when they know they are violating the rules. That is true in small things. It is true in crime. And it is true in government systems that distribute power and money.
That brings us to the 2020 Census.
In 2010, the Census Bureau conducted a post-enumeration survey and found no state with a statistically significant overcount or undercount. Not one.
So let’s dispense with the excuse that an accurate census is impossible. It is possible. We did it.
After the 2020 Census, the Census Bureau admitted that the count was wrong in multiple states. Some states were significantly undercounted. Others were significantly overcounted.
Those errors were not trivial. They involved hundreds of thousands of people.
And once the mistakes were admitted, here is the part that should outrage everyone.
They could not be fixed.
Apportionment is locked in. No recount. No correction. The errors stand for a full decade.
The Incentive Problem No One Wants to Talk About
During the 2020 Census, the Bureau partnered extensively with NGOs and outside groups for outreach and field operations.
Afterward, the Commerce Department Inspector General documented serious management failures, including problems handling falsified census work. In some cases, enumerators who falsified information were not promptly fired, their work was not fully redone, and bonuses were still paid.
That is not how you enforce integrity. That is how you teach people that the rules do not matter.
If people can cheat, keep their jobs, and sometimes get rewarded, you should expect more cheating.
Systems train behavior. They do not respond to moral lectures.
Here are the states most affected by headcount errors.
Most undercounted states by people are missed.
Florida missed roughly three-quarters of a million people.
Texas missed more than half a million.
Tennessee missed around 340,000.
Illinois missed about a quarter million.
Arkansas missed roughly 150,000.
Most overcounted states by people added
New York added roughly 670,000 people.
Minnesota added more than two hundred thousand.
Ohio added around 175,000.
Massachusetts added more than 150,000.
Hawaii added roughly one hundred thousand.
Those are not rounding errors. That is real representation, real money, and real power.
Minnesota kept a congressional seat in the closest apportionment margin in modern history. The margin was effectively twenty-six people.
Later, the Census Bureau admitted Minnesota was overcounted.
Tennessee, meanwhile, was one of the most severely undercounted states in the country.
Minnesota benefited from a census process that was later admitted to be wrong. Tennessee paid the price. And there was no recount and no accountability.
This did not happen in 2010, and it can never be allowed to happen again.
This level of error was not normal. It was not inevitable. It was the product of choices.
Here is what raises the stakes going into 2030.
Since COVID, domestic migration has accelerated dramatically toward the South and the interior of the country. States like South Carolina, North Carolina, Texas, Idaho, Utah, and Tennessee are growing faster than the national average.
At the same time, several of the bluest states, including New York, Illinois, and California, have stagnated or lost population.
That means representation should be shifting.
If the fastest-growing states are undercounted again, and slower-growing states are overcounted again, the distortion compounds.
That is not just unfair. It undermines trust in the system itself.
This is not complicated.
First, falsification must carry real consequences. Mandatory termination. Mandatory rework. Referrals for prosecution when appropriate. Bonuses should never be paid where fraud is found.
Second, audits must be immediate and serious. Abnormal patterns should trigger re-verification, not excuses.
Third, outreach partnerships should not replace accountability. Trust cannot be outsourced.
Fourth, states that are growing should treat census preparation as a permanent responsibility, not a last-minute scramble.
Finally, we should tell the truth. This is not about paperwork. If you are not counted accurately, you lose representation and money for ten years.
Closing Thought
Ilhan Omar may not even be in Congress if we weren’t rewarding fraud in myriad ways, including with the Census.
You cannot design a system that hands out power, money, and representation, then act surprised when people push the rules.
You get the behavior you reward.
2010 proved we can do this right.
2020 proved what happens when incentives are broken.
2030 will change the House, will change the electoral college and the incentives for fraud will be even higher than they were when it happened in 2020.
People whose livelihood depends on bilking the government will always work harder to get paid than people who pay taxes quietly and voluntarily care for their neighbors. The 2030 census needs every church, every homeschooler who distrusts the government having data, every person who was sidelined in 2020 to understand that you are punishing your state for a decade and your nation with wicked rulers if you do not stand up and get counted in 2030.
We must never allow the failure of 2020 to be repeated.
Clayton Wood is a Knoxville attorney and pastor who runs Thrive and Wears Valley Ranch.
