U.S. cities and towns that have challenged their 2020 census population figures appear to be winning only small victories. Of the dozen or so municipal appeals that the U.S. Census Bureau has resolved and made public, the biggest gain so far has been for tiny Whiteville, Tennessee, which won recognition for an additional 1,958 residents. That brings Whiteville’s official population to 4,564. Nothing can be done to change how congressional seats were divided using the 2020 Census, nor can new figures change how political districts were redrawn. However, changes can make a difference in how federal funding is distributed. Whiteville’s victory boosted it’s budget by about 30%. But even with just small increases of several hundred residents, cities like Milwaukee are taking what they can get. Wisconsin’s largest city recently gained more than 800 residents after it was discovered that inmates at one of the local jails were wrongly assigned to a neighboring city. That challenge was organized with other Wisconsin municipalities.
