At least that's what Todd Breitbart, the leading technical voice blasting Senate Republicans, appears to have figured out.

According to his analysis, the Republicans' Washington DC-based lawyer Michael Carvin used the data set released back in March:

The population counts shown in his table, "2010 Senate Size Calculation," are from the Census Bureau's March 2010 redistricting data release (the PL94-171 data). These counts - the state total, the 'ratio of apportionment,' the county totals and the figures for the parts of the Bronx - reflect neither the subtraction of the prison populations nor the reallocation of prisoners to their prior home addresses.

Now, this shouldn't be surprising: only at yesterday's LATFOR meeting was the prisoner reallocation issue--though agreed to in principle last month--officially accepted.

Breitbart's point--and I'm sure we'll see this increasingly from Senate Democrats--is that the Senate Republican argument that the method used to get to 62 seats in 2002 is the exact same used to get to 63 in 2012 is called into question. If that were the case, why wait until January 2012 when you could have done the work back in March and settled the issue then?

The assumption that's fueling Senate Ds' criticism is that the math to get to 63 wasn't settled back in March, just the desire to do so.

I'll try and follow up with Senator Nozzolio today to check on this, as well as their lawyer Michael Carvin.