This week, John Thomson, U.S. Census Director since 2013 and forty-two year veteran of the bureau, announced that he will be resigning from his job in June. While term limits for that office would have forced him to step down next year in any event, the timing is particularly worrisome, considering who will be appointing his successor – and what that successor is likely to do.

The New York Times reports that Thompson’s announcement comes just as the Census Bureau is experiencing a budget shortfall, resulting in delayed field testing of new methods next year – and raising serious concerns about the 2020 Census.

The U.S. census, conducted every ten years, is much more than a head count. It is an extensive demographic analysis of who we are as a population: where we live, what we do, what we believe – and to a great extent, how we stand on issues. In other words, it tells something about how we are likely to vote.

Herein lies a great contradiction: numerous polls and surveys have clearly shown that the majority of U.S. voters across the board are either moderate or liberal in their political and social views. And yet, for some reason, the nation is now under the jackboot of a hard-right, corporatist, authoritarian GOP regime.

Of course, we know how this has happened. It’s not because of Fox News propaganda, nor would-be kingmakers Chuck and Davey Koch spending hundreds of millions attempting to buy office for their pet politicians (although such things don’t hurt their agenda). It is because of that noxious, 200-year-old parasitic creature known as the “gerrymander” (named for Elbridge Gerry, vice-president under James Madison).