The Results for the 2020 Census Are Delayed. That Is Good News.

“These types of processing anomalies have occurred in past censuses,” census officials said.

President Donald Trump will not get the final 2020 census results, but President-elect Joe Biden will. The final report won’t be completed until, at the earliest, Jan. 26, a report from The New York Times shows. That means Trump’s attempt to restructure populations by excluding undocumented immigrants to reappoint House seats for a GOP gain—which some deemed unconstitutional—won’t be possible. 

According to the report, officials with the Census Bureau “told the Commerce Department that a growing number of snags in the massive data-processing operation that generates population totals had delayed the completion of population calculations.”

RELATED: Lawsuit: Census Workers Lied on Forms Because Trump Administration Wanted Rushed Count

“During post-collection processing, certain processing anomalies have been discovered,” Steven Dillingham, with the Census Bureau, told The New York Times. “These types of processing anomalies have occurred in past censuses. I am directing the Census Bureau to utilize all resources available to resolve this as expeditiously as possible. As it has been all along, our goal remains an accurate and statistically sound census.”

This latest news on the census comes on the heels of a lawsuit by advocacy groups and local governments that claims census reporters were told to falsify information to rush the census count. 

“Instructions such as those identified above suggested to enumerators that they should falsify data to close cases quickly,” the lawsuit said.

On Oct. 19, the US Census Bureau reported that it had reached 99.9% of all housing units and addresses nationwide. However, the completion of their findings came as the Trump administration aimed to stop the count early as it was already delayed due to the pandemic. The US Supreme Court ruled that the census count could end by Oct. 15, rather than Oct. 31. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the only judge on the US Supreme Court to rule against closing the 2020 census count early.

In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote: “The harms caused by rushing this year’s census count are irreparable. And respondents will suffer their lasting impact for at least the next ten years.”

RELATED: Justice Sotomayor Stood Alone in Opposing the Early Census Shutdown

Justice Sotomayor noted that the census bureau’s 99% count could have a devastating effect on federal funding to minority communities.

“The Government attempts to downplay that risk by asserting that over 99 percent of households in 49 States are already accounted for,” she wrote. “But even a fraction of a percent of the Nation’s 140 million households amounts to hundreds of thousands of people left uncounted. And significantly, the percentage of nonresponses is likely much higher among marginalized populations and in hard-to-count areas, such as rural and tribal lands.”