Constitutionally Mandated Census Must Be Saved

In early May 2017, Director John Thompson of the U.S. Census Bureau abruptly resgined after Congress refused to provide adequate funding for the upcoming 2020 census.

An administration uninterested in staffing federal agencies, at war with facts and eager to help Congress cut the budget is further endangering a cornerstone of American democracy: the duty to count all who live here.

The Government Accountability Office already put the 2020 census on its list of high-risk projects early this year, due to uncertainty about its budget and technology, and Americans’ increasing distrust of government data collection.

The underfunding of the census and the resignation of the highly experience bureau director combine to threaten the reliability of the decennial census and creates an opening for the administration to misallocate House members and electoral votes to their advantage. This could have serious long term implications.

Every decade since 1790, as required by the Constitution, the federal government has undertaken a painstaking census of its people, the accuracy and fairness of which serves the interests of both political parties and of every citizen. The decennial count is used to apportion seats in the House of Representatives and set the boundaries of congressional districts. It determines how tens of billions of dollars in federal aid are divvied up.

An accurate census is crucial to properly allocating representatives at both the federal and state level. Congressional Republican have been pushing the agency to cut costs, ignoring inflation and the nearly 10% growth of the nation's population. Republican underfunding of the bureau damage census takers' ability to accurately account for those population most difficult to count - low-income Americans and minorities; coincidentally, or not, these are the same demographic groups most likely to vote for Democrats.

Trump poses an additional threat: His repeated efforts to discredit voter registration data and government employment numbers leave census officials worried that a random tweet from him could discourage more people from participating. Census professionals worry that the administration’s efforts to deport undocumented immigrants could make them wary of providing information about themselves and where they live.

An accurate decennial census is also crucial in fairly distributing federal spending, and many federal program rely on accurrate census figures to accomplish their goals. While the Census Bureau often appears to be one of the more boring agencies, their work is vitally important to the smooth operations of the federal government.

The census begins on April 1, 2020, and it must be completed in the summer for congressional reapportionment and redistricting to take place. Any failure would be immediately apparent — and it would tar Republicans at the height of the 2020 primary campaign season. Perhaps that reality will help inspire congressional leaders to support an accurate count, demonstrating to Americans that, even in the age of Trump, facts matter.

ACTION: Call your congresspeople and ask that they push Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the White House to name a qualified replacement for John Thompson as soon as possible, and to increase the budget allocation for the agency so the Constitutionally required decennial census can be performed accurately.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/17/opinion/census-trump-budget-cuts.html