The Census Project Blog

by Terri Ann Lowenthal

I’m about to wade into potentially dangerous waters, but I feel compelled to have this conversation in the light of day.

Last week, in a Glenn Beck-worthy Washington Times op-ed, former Times intern Anthony Bowe charged that pro-amnesty “left wing extremist” groups (and 2010 census partners) — like the National Council of La Raza, National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, and SEIU – are poised to help shift the balance of political power by helping ensure an accurate count of all people living in the U.S. Their role as census “footsoldiers” will “undermine trust in the census among mainstream Americans,” Times blogger Bowe warned, ably using a self-fulfilling-prophecy scare tactic characteristic of, say, Rush Limbaugh.

Is the attack an aberration? Were it only so. Lawmakers spooked by the thought of an inclusive census dipped their toes in the water with a swift and cutting campaign against ACORN, suggesting (falsely) that census takers hired by the nonprofit advocacy group would overstate population counts to benefit liberal politicians (e.g. Democrats). The flurry of press coverage tying the enumeration to the specter of fraud was enough for the census chief to pull the plug on ACORN’s 2010 census “partnership,” even though the organization hadn’t so much as posted the 2010 logo on its web site.

In reality, ACORN’s only useful role would have been to encourage census participation among its core constituency: the poor. Emboldened by their success in pushing one hard-to-count community advocate out of the way, some conservatives are ready to take on civil and immigrant rights groups in the public arena and possibly in the courts.

Last summer, the chair of the Republican Census Task Force sent a fundraising appeal, warning that “radical” interest groups – like the NAACP and Hispanic Federation – were teaming up with President Obama to “rig” census results in favor of “liberals.” For whom was the Georgia lawmaker raising money? The Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF), which successfully challenged (all the way to the Supreme Court) the use of statistical sampling methods in the 2000 census. SLF – “THE EXPERTS in stopping liberals from manipulating the census,” according to Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) – know how to “advance our conservative agenda … in the ‘Court of Public Opinion’,” the plea for money assured.

The bogeyman of censuses past – statistical sampling – is dead and buried for 2010, removing one sure-fire way of reducing the disproportionate undercount of racial minorities and the poor. But with populations of color – especially Latinos — growing significantly over the past decade, lawmakers (how can I say this tactfully?) who are less likely to represent hard-to-count communities, have to find another way to keep the numbers in Democratic-leaning areas low. As the distinguished gentleman from Georgia helpfully observed, the census is “the alpha and omega of political power” (catchy!), whose constitutional integrity must be defended at all costs (or at least for as much money as they can raise!).

Those same “corrupt” champions of liberal doctrine are now gearing up to encourage and facilitate census participation in historically undercounted communities across the country, employing traditional grassroots strategies to educate skeptical and fearful population groups about the importance of being counted. And I can picture the guardians of “conservative values” standing in the wings, waiting to gin up anti-Obama fury by insinuating manipulation of the numbers in low-income, minority, and immigrant neighborhoods. They don’t have to prove a thing – success can simply mean casting a shadow over the integrity of the count and tying up the Census Bureau and redistricting process in court for years.

Am I overreacting? I frankly hope so, but I’m uneasy. Does anyone else see clouds on the horizon?

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Clarification: Census Bureau officials have asked us to clarify a statement in the December 1, 2009, Census Project Blog, “Are Northern States Being Cheated? Counting Snowbirds in the Census,” regarding the policy for enumerating residents of northern states who do not return a questionnaire from their southern home and are later visited by a census taker at their northern address during Nonresponse Follow-Up (e.g. door-to-door visits to unresponsive homes). The Census Bureau will count people who have two residences “where they spend the majority of their time,” according to a Kansas City Regional Census Office official. People should decide where they spend the majority of their time and fill out the census form sent to that address. If a respondent tells a census taker that they consider their northern address to be their home, even if they happened to still be staying at their southern home on Census Day, the census taker will record the residents at their northern address.