Outgoing president Donald Trump’s plan to undermine the US Census count so he could allocate House seats more to traditional Republican states may have been sabotaged by Trump’s attempt to undermine the US Census, Roll Call reports.

Trump ordered the processing of data from the decadal 2020 Census to be completed by December 31, 2020, so he could allot House seats and federal funding without having all residents included in the numbers.  Trump wanted to exclude undocumented immigrants from the Census count used to sway the allocation.

Instead of having five months to process the data, Trump demanded it be done in half the time.  And Trump did not send out Census door-knockers out into the field until September, four months later than they’re usually deployed.

However, Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham said the slipshot approach to data gathering has led to significant delays in confirming and processing the information gathered, making the Trump-declared December 31st deadline unattainable.

“During post-collection processing, certain processing anomalies have been discovered,” Dillingham said in a statement Thursday. “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.”

The Census Bureau had requested an extension of the deadline to ensure the data was correct, asking that the deadline could be set in April, five months after the neighborhood canvassing.  Trump denied the request.

Now, it appears, the data will not be ready until after the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden because Trump tried to manipulate the system.