A growing number of mayors are banding together to fight what they consider to be an inaccurate and abruptly curtailed 2020 census, using an arsenal of legal, legislative and congressional efforts.

Why it matters: The outcome may determine whether President Trump or Joe Biden controls the redistricting process, which governs everything from congressional representation and reapportionment to funding for schools and Head Start.

Driving the news: Mayors from both parties — under the aegis of the U.S. Conference of Mayors — are putting on a full-court press to extend the Census Bureau's data collection work (which ended Oct. 15) and extend the data-processing work to next April.

• They're backing a lawsuit filed by the National Urban League against Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that sought to revert to an earlier Census Bureau timetable that set Oct. 31 as the deadline for data collection, and April 30, 2021, as the deadline for data processing.
• The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration and allowed the count to stop early — but the case still hasn't been heard on its merits.

The mayors are also lobbying members of Congress to take up their cause, supporting bills to extend the census deadlines.

The big picture: The mayors' concern is that people of color, indigenous people, poor people, young people and undocumented immigrants will be even more undercounted than usual.

• Many of those categories tend to be urban dwellers, so omitting them hurts city finances and representation. (People in rural areas tend to be undercounted, too.)
• They say that census workers were stretched so thin they weren't able to knock on doors six times to seek a response, as they're normally supposed to.
• And they're dismayed by the heavy reliance on a protocol that's new this year: the use of federal administrative records — from the IRS, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Social Security Administration — to fill in many blanks.

Where it stands: At a news conference Wednesday, Census Bureau officials described the many obstacles they faced this year — the pandemic, hurricanes and wildfires — but said they finished the 2020 census on Oct. 15 and will "deliver complete and accurate state population counts as close to the December 31, 2020 statutory deadline as possible."

• Those counts — which typically take five months — will take two-and-a-half months this year.
• Asked how the bureau could achieve this, Al Fontenot, associate director of Decennial Census Programs at the U.S. Census Bureau, said, "Technology has advanced over the past 10 years. Computers are faster, technology is faster, and a lot of the processes can happen faster."

The bottom line: The Census Bureau says it has accounted for 99.98% of all addresses in the nation.

• But longtime census consultant Terri Ann Lowenthal draws air quotes around "accounted for." She notes that the bureau "didn't say counted. They didn't say enumerated. They said 'accounted for.'"
• "The percent of housing units counted, by itself, tells us nothing about the quality and accuracy of the data collected or the overall accuracy of the census."

Home prices are rising rapidly across the U.S., according to ATTOM Data Solutions, a property data provider that I've found valuable over the years.

Driving the news: ATTOM released its 3Q 2020 figures this week, concluding that 77% of metro areas posted "double-digit annual home price gains."

• Profit margins rose in 86% of the 103 metropolitan statistical areas studied.
• Top gainers included St. Louis, Missouri; Columbus, Ohio; and Salem, Oregon.
• The biggest profit margin drops were in Honolulu, San Francisco, and Fort Collins, Colorado.
• The biggest year-over-year increases in median home prices were in Bridgeport and New Haven, Connecticut, and in Detroit.

Worst-case scenarios for Election Day: Illegal paramilitary groups show up fully armed at polling places. People are intimidated from voting. Extremist groups launch violent protests that last for days.

Why it matters: Mayors are playing down the threats — projecting a "we've got this" tone of reassurance — but some law enforcement officials and people who monitor extremists are telling them to be prepared for anything.

Driving the news: With the pandemic, the polarizing presidential race and the civil unrest in the wake of George Floyd's killing, cities and states are taking unusual measures ahead of Nov. 3. The word "de-escalation" is being used a lot.

• In Albuquerque, D.A. Raúl Torrez tells Axios he plans to staff "a war room of senior-level prosecutors" who will be available on Election Day to help police officers handle specific disruptions.
• Iowa just implemented a suite of cybersecurity measures to combat electoral fraud.
• Michigan hired its first full-time election security specialist (and announced Friday that voters won't be able to openly carry their guns inside the polls).
• Police forces across the nation are being prepped on local rules and laws; they're not allowed inside polls unless they're actually voting.

What they're saying:

• Tampa Mayor Jane Castor: "There’s a heightened concern. We have heard about the possibility of having individuals at polling sites intent on disrupting the ability of people to freely vote, but we don't know if it's just an urban legend. We try to monitor in a preventive way. I don’t expect that we will have any issues."
• Austin Mayor Steve Adler: "What people are more concerned about than anything else right now is the fear of things as opposed to an indication that the fears would actually be realized."

Go deeper: Most arrested in protests are not associated with antifa

Read the full story.

In what I'll go ahead and consider good news for my hometown, a running week-to-week tally of office space occupancy rates has found that New York City's rate keeps edging up, although the top rates are in Houston, Austin, Dallas, Austin, LA and Philly.

Details: Kastle Systems, which runs electronic card-swipe entry systems for about 3,600 buildings and 41,000 businesses (and has more than 1.3 million “cardholders”), has run the "Kastle Return-to-Work Barometer" since the coronavirus started hitting hard, tracking office occupancy rates in 10 big cities every week.

• The numbers have been rising since the end of the summer, but still reflect differences in both public policy and community mindset.
• "There are interesting disparities based upon cities, from a low of 14% in San Francisco to a high of more than 40% Dallas," Mark Ein, chairman of Kastle Systems, told me.
• The 10-city average continues to rise, and it's now at 27% or above.

The bottom line: "The health of our downtowns is precipitous at the moment," Ein said. "Because if people aren't there, the whole ecosystem suffers."

Urban flight seeded the COVID-19 pandemic across the U.S. (SSRN)

• Three academics from the NYU Stern School of Business document how younger, whiter, wealthier people have disproportionately fled major cities during the pandemic — and how the places they moved saw big bumps in COVID-19 cases, "suggesting that urban flight was a vector of disease spread."

Police rethink policies as cities pay millions to settle misconduct claims (WSJ)

• A WSJ analysis found that "the 20 U.S. cities and counties with the biggest police departments have paid over $2 billion since 2015 for alleged misconduct and civil rights violations," including excessive force and wrongful detention.

Your local bookstore wants you to know that it's struggling (NYT)

• While book sales are up 6% this year (per NPD Bookscan), the American Booksellers Association says "more than one independent bookstore has closed each week since the pandemic began." Those bookstores tend to be a big draw for locals and tourists in college towns and other cities.