The census is an endangered species. Around the world, it is systematically being hunted down -- and it is now at the edge of extinction.
You might think that the census is an inoffensive creature, fretted over only by the wonkiest of bean-counters.
However, it's a very powerful animal. It has the ability to shape political fortunes. For this reason, it's deliberately being exterminated by politicians for the most cynical of reasons.
It's a sinister scheme because, in a very real sense, performing a census is the most fundamental act of any democracy.
Democracies are governments that are based upon the act of counting: counting citizens and counting votes to determine who is granted political power. Our founding fathers recognized this; barely four paragraphs after "We the people," there's an instruction to enumerate the citizenry every ten years. Yet in the US, after more than twenty decennial counts, politicians are trying to dismantle the census. The same is happening elsewhere, too -- in Canada, in the UK, and elsewhere around the globe.
In early August, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution decrying the Census Bureau's work as a "dangerous invasion": "... the Census Bureau acts exactly as a scam artist would, asking very personal questions and using fear of penalties to manipulate the respondent to answer." Earlier in the summer, Canada's Tories used similar language to justify meddling with their own census. (The head of Statistics Canada -- the organization in charge of the survey -- resigned in protest.) And in Britain, the Tory party declared that 2011 would see the very last census ever conducted in Albion, ending a two-century-old tradition.
Nevertheless, a democracy needs information about its population to function. Though British plans are still murky, it appears that they will be attempting to mine government databases rather than making a door-to-door survey. This will be much less accurate than the traditional census (after all, there are plenty of people who are doing their damnedest to stay off government lists) unless the state is willing to spend an enormous amount of time and money building an Orwell-quality system to track citizens as they move about. Canada's change to the census -- making the long version of the survey voluntary rather than mandatory -- has already been shown to increase costs and reduce reliability. (In 2003, the US experimented with a voluntary census-related survey; not only did the accuracy drop dramatically, the estimated price of the survey swelled by nearly 40 percent.)
It's not a wise policy to reduce the quality of a government function while, simultaneously, making the costs bloat out of control, but that's precisely what anti-census politicians are advocating. To understand why, it's best to look at where the attacks on the census are most nakedly partisan: right here in the United States, where the issues of counting the population are inextricably tied to battles about race and politics.
Censuses never manage to count everybody. No matter how hard they try, census workers miss hundreds of thousands or millions of people. Citizens who move about, citizens who rent homes rather than own them, citizens who don't speak English, citizens who are mistrustful of the government -- poor citizens, itinerant citizens, minority citizens -- these are the ones who are most likely to be missed. Over the years, the census bureau has been trying to improve their ability to count the undercounted. The problem arises because these people, when they vote, tend to lean to the left and vote Democratic. As a result, Republicans have been fighting to undermine the Bureau's every effort to improve the count.
They've been winning. In the late 1990s, the Republican members of the House of Representatives sued to stop the Bureau's plans to correct the undercount with statistical sampling. The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, held that sampling was unconstitutional -- that any attempt to use statistical techniques to improve the accuracy of the count went against the founding fathers' ideals. (In a later opinion, Clarence Thomas even insisted that Thomas Jefferson had a sophisticated knowledge of statistical sampling, even though the techniques date from the 20th century.) As a result, the Census Bureau is forced to report two numbers every ten years: their best estimate of the population of the United States, and a much less accurate one that determines who is represented in Congress.
This, then, is what these battles seem to be about.
Politicians are trying to kill the census in hopes of gaining an electoral advantage -- by wiping millions of opposition voters off the official rolls. There's nothing ideological going on; it's not a matter of economy or privacy or morality. (Indeed, if the roles were reversed and the undercounted leaned to the right, it's a very good bet that Labour and the Democrats would be the ones trying to kill the census.) It's merely a political dirty trick, a sleazy campaign to use phony numbers to rewrite reality. But it strikes at the heart of how our democracy -- and democracies around the world -- function.
And once these censuses are dismantled, there will be no going back.
Any protests will be too late to count.
Charles Seife is the author of "Sun in a Bottle" and "Zero," which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for first nonfiction book, and was named a New York Times Notable Book.
His new book, Proofiness, can be ordered here.
Follow Charles Seife on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cgseife
"Very personal questions"? Are they serious?
How many people live here, what are their ages, do you have a computer, etc. I put way more "personal" info on the sign up for grocery store discount cards.
OMG --- we now rank 26 for education! How low do you want to go?
Each year, the tax payer would file an income report with IRS, verifiable through matching data like the current system. Based on the income report, the taxpayer would be sent an IRS rebate for housing, food, and other costs. Because those costs fall more disproportionately on the low-income taxpayers, the rebate would be graduated to give high income tax reporters less and low income reporters more.
No one could escape a tax on every retail purchase. Fewer people would evade tax reporting because they want the rebate. A very accurate census could be gleaned from IRS/Social Security data in this scenario.
Regressive taxation = Poor pay more than the rich (as proportion of income)
if you can explain to me how flat tax means the rich pay more in proportion of income than the poor i will agreee with you. But a poor person spends every dollar they earn in consuption just to live (living pay check to pay check) the rich save and invest (wich means they dont spend every thing on consuption) in the flat tax system savings and investment would not get taxed. This means that the poor would pay a 20% tax on their entire income and the rich would pay a 20% on only a portion of their income (what ever they consume in the united states). If the rich save and invest about 30% of their income it would mean the rich pay 20% on 70% of their income and the poor pay 20% on 100% of their income. This means its a REGRESSIVE TAX not a progressive tax.
Congressional and other governmental representation will then accurately reflect taxpaid voters. Leverage the value of the governmental databases which already exist, downsize the census bureau and save the taxpayers the ridiculous cost of this process. Plus, the data is available any year you want to take the snapshot.
Gregg took one look at THAT circus and politely declined. So who is it politicizing the census again?
Bob Gate Sec of Defence
Ironically the only dem that Bush ever nominated to a cabinet postion was Mineta as Sec of transportation - and because he was a clinton holdover
"people are entitled to their own opinions not their own facts"
The question was who is "politicizing the census" and since the census is a function of the Commerce Department, it's ridiculous to strip it from that department in such a blatant political fashion.
Quote facts all you like , Champ. But it works better if they relate in some way to the discussion.
counting the people is one thing but anything else on the questionnaire is wrong in any form
People that have a problem with all those pesky questions need to relax. Do you rent or own? Gender? Race? That's about the extent of it.
I guess if you want to have a concern about a question, it would be the one asking for your phone #, but then it's pretty easy to get someone's # off the internet anyway.
condition lasting 6 months or more, does
this person have any difficulty in doing any of
the following activities:
Is this grandparent currently responsible for
most of the basic needs of any grandchild(ren)
under the age of 18 who live(s) in this house
or apartment?
Has this person ever served on active duty in
the U.S. Armed Forces, military Reserves, or
National Guard? Active duty does not include training
for the Reserves or National Guard, but DOES include
activation, for example, for the Persian Gulf War.
When did this person serve on active duty
in the U.S. Armed Forces
Is the work location inside the limits of that
city or town?
How did this person usually get to work LAST
WEEK?
right all these questions are necessary
http://www.census.gov/dmd/www/pdf/d-61b.pdf
Either way you get error.
What about using mixed methods and some form of an average?
Or... if we could get actual experts involved... choosing the method(s) that actually works best for the attributes of the sample in question. Pollsters use methods often to tweak results, but social scientists try to determine the best method for accuracy.
Obviously a statistical method would need to be worked out by an independent group with bipartisan oversight to ensure the most fair method.
But Republicans would oppose even a change in method with low margin of error because the default error is predictably in their favor.
Whether it's trying to do away with the Census or mandating "policy officers" to politicize every govt agency or changing tax policy to shift the cost of govt off the wealthy and onto the middle and working class people, the GOP has overtly AND covertly systematically undermined, sold out and destroyed America, as our Founding Fathers envisioned it.