When longtime Indiana politician Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) lobbed a powerful allegation against the Census Bureau last October, what had been a low-profile, fringe GOP conspiracy theory burst to the fore. Banks said he believed the Census Bureau had injected errors in the decennial population count and survey which were so severe, they netted Democrats more representation in Congress at the expense of Republican seats.

“The Biden admin used a shady ‘privacy’ formula,” Banks wrote on X, adding that the 2020 census “scrambled the data and miscounted 14 states. It included illegal immigrants and handed Democrats extra seats.”