The Census Project Blog

Entries from February 2010

On The Eve of the Census: Making Sure You Count

February 23, 2010 · 4 Comments

by Terri Ann Lowenthal

Census fans, excitement is in the air!

Already, “advance letters” from chief census honcho Robert Groves are arriving in mailboxes in rural areas, targeted counties along the Gulf Coast recovering from Hurricane Katrina, and some urban dwellings where direct mail delivery is spotty. Following that “heads up” will be the first wave of “enumerators” (sounds so … math class?) distributing census forms by hand to homes without traditional “city style” addresses or regular mail service. These census takers will verify the location of each housing unit, possibly spotting addresses missed in earlier canvassing, as they carry out the Update/Leave (get it?) operation.

In a similar vein, starting later in March, census workers will visit homes in remote areas, including Indian reservations, confirm the unit’s precise location, and collect census information from the household on the spot (Update/Enumerate operation — get it?).

From March 8 – 10, most households will receive the advance letter, letting them know to expect their census form in the mail about a week later and asking them to mail it back “promptly” (Mail-out/Mail-back operation — duh!). The English-only letter (except for the 13.5 million homes that will get a bilingual English-Spanish form) includes a note in Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Russian, telling recipients to visit the census Web site for help. A few days hence, homes in census tracts where at least 10 percent of households primarily speak a language other than English (one of the five in which census forms are printed) will receive a postcard with instructions on how to request an in-language form, which you can do until April 21.

Later this week, the Census Bureau will activate the Telephone Questionnaire Assistance lines for Census 2010. The primary purpose of these call centers is to answer questions about the census and process requests for in-language forms. The phone lines are also a “last resort” way to respond to the census, for people who are unable to fill out the form and mail it on their own (for example, due to a disability). Keep in mind that, through April 11, people who want to call in their answers must provide the unique code on the census form they received in the mail.

Need help filling out the questionnaire in another language? Assistance guides are available in 59 languages on the 2010 census Web site, or you can call the toll-free help lines to request one. Hearing-impaired individuals can call the TDD line if they have questions. And fearful immigrants don’t have to rely on the Census Bureau; many census advocates are preparing assistance materials in a wide range of languages. (See the Quick Links and Resources for Census Advocates sections of my Census News Briefs.)

Didn’t get a form at your home base? From March 19 – April 19, Be Counted forms in six languages will be available at 40,000 locations around the country. Can’t get one of those? After April 12, call the help line and give your answers over the phone. But remember that the census is first and foremost an address-based operation that is best completed through the major enumeration methods. Be Counted forms and telephone responses are stop-gap ways to participate if all else fails.

To prod historically hard-to-count communities, the Census Bureau will mail about 40 million replacement questionnaires, in two waves in early April, to all addresses in low-response neighborhoods. Additional major operations will count people without a usual residence (Service-based Enumeration, March 29 – 31), people living in group facilities such as college dorms and prisons (Group Quarters Enumeration, March 30 – May 14), and people who are transient, such as migrant workers (Enumeration at Transitory Locations, March 22 – April 16). People experiencing homelessness or who live in a temporary location should wait until these operations are finished before using a Be Counted form or calling the assistance lines if they believe they were still missed.

I hope this quick tutorial on the early major census operations will help census advocates and local officials mobilize their constituents to be counted in the way most appropriate to their circumstances. By understanding the big picture, we can help ensure a more complete count without gumming up the works in a breathtakingly complex national exercise.

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A note to our friends in the census-resistance movement: If you follow the advice of those great patriots, Rep. Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck, and violate the law (13 U.S.C. §221) by only writing in the number of people in your household, guess what? A census taker will come a-callin’, spending my hard-earned tax dollars to follow up with households that decided the law doesn’t apply to them. Go ahead; make a constitutionally mandated effort involving 9,400 activities to manage 44 operations even harder. But don’t even think of complaining about the high cost of the census. At some point, hypocrisy renders “principles” moot.

Categories: Census Operations
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Catching the Census Spirit (Or Not)

February 16, 2010 · Leave a Comment

by Terri Ann Lowenthal

Did you have a nice Valentine’s Day, dear readers? I had a ball sending census Valentine e-cards to family and friends. Courtesy of the ya es hora. HAGASE CONTAR! (It’s time. Make yourself count!) campaign, the nifty cards conveyed a “we’re all in this together” spirit — Count the one you love!

And we’d better all be in this together, because the magnitude of the task is mind-boggling. We’re talking 310 million people (and no national registry)! It’s going to take not just a lot of hard work to achieve anything close to an accurate count, but also a great deal of creativity to gin up collective enthusiasm for the census.

So, is everyone pitching in? Well, in one corner we have census advocates who believe that the U.S. Constitution calls for an enumeration of everyone living in this great country, in order to create a level playing field in our democracy. These believers — national and grassroots nonprofits, private and corporate foundations, business owners — are supplementing the Census Bureau’s outreach and promotion campaign with an unprecedented range of innovative activities targeting segments of the population that are at greatest risk of being missed.

Christmas brought us posters and palm cards, distributed in churches across the country, which highlighted the journey of Mary and Joseph to be counted in an ancient census. The NAACP is circulating a “Take the Census Pledge.” Voto Latino is offering 25 iTunes to those who promise to fill out their form. The Leadership Conference Education Fund whipped up attractive calendar magnets spotlighting key census milestones to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Moving Forward Gulf Coast, Inc. taped a really cool video, featuring Darnell Dinkins (who dat?), for its “Man Up, Be Counted” campaign, aimed at historically undercounted Black men. Target will print the census logo on its shopping bags next month.

Coming up are events focused on senior citizens, college students and small business owners in hard-to-count communities. Once census forms are in the mail, there will be a Census Faith Weekend (March 20-21) and National Week of Action (March 22-27), when community organizations will make an all-out push to encourage their constituencies to fill out the questionnaires. It’s all so uplifting!

In the other corner we have … ummm, well, we have the Republican National Committee sending out an “Official Document” that is a fundraising appeal disguised as a “Census” of the party faithful. We have House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) signing a similar plea for funds on behalf of the National Republican Congressional Committee that tells recipients they have been “carefully selected” to receive the “census document.” The Virginia-based Council for Retirement Security commissioned a National Census of Senior Citizens (see the mailing – PDF). I think I see a pattern here: “Hey, what a great opportunity to get everyone’s attention! Let’s pretend we’re a census!” (Still nothing on Rep. Boehner’s Web site promoting the real census, though.)

We have Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Fox News and a host of conservative organizations lambasting the Census Bureau for buying a Super Bowl ad. That is not fair! Were it not for the official paid media blitz, the rip-off artists wouldn’t be able to take advantage of growing public awareness to look for a “census” envelope in the mail.

And we have Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Glenn Beck and Tea Party leaders telling people not to answer any census questions beyond the number of people in their households. The Constitution doesn’t contemplate any additional queries, according to the anti-census crowd. Oh really? According to the Census Bureau’s Web site, the first census in 1790 asked six questions, including gender, race and relationship to the head of the household. Virginia Representative James Madison (he, of the band of Founding Fathers and subsequent Oval Office fame), a member of the special congressional committee that designed the first census form, apparently recommended at least five of these subjects.

I don’t know about you, but this constant negative drumbeat just doesn’t get my census juices flowing.

So with Census Day finally on the horizon, you’d better hope your neighborhood is in the bull’s eye of the imaginative and inclusive pro-census campaigns. Otherwise, you might spend the next ten years wondering why there’s no money to widen the highways, hire more cops and build more classrooms, and why new businesses aren’t opening their doors in your community. And don’t bet on being able to ask your elected officials to help you make the case, because political representation will flow to those who collectively stood up to be counted.

Categories: Census Outreach Efforts · Complete Count
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Let the Games Begin! Manipulating Public Opinion on the Census

February 9, 2010 · 1 Comment

by Terri Ann Lowenthal

manipulate —
1. to adapt or change (accounts, figures, etc.) to suit one’s purpose or advantage
2. to manage or influence skillfully, esp. in an unfair manner: to manipulate people’s feelings
(Source: dictionary.com; italics in original)

The 2010 Winter Olympics begin this week, which is fitting for our purposes because the 2010 decennial census will require an Olympian effort. It’s also fitting because the census games have already begun. The big event? Mud throwing, as in, aim at the wall and see what sticks. (Hmmm, sounds more like a summer than winter sport, but maybe professional mud throwers have to be slick, like an ice rink or luge run.)

But back to the census, which in fact already started with door-to-door enumeration well north of the Olympic host city of Vancouver, Canada. The vast majority of American households will receive their census forms next month, and then the real push begins to convince the skeptical, the fearful, the too-busy, and the unaware to answer ten questions and mail back the form.

The nation’s linguistic and cultural diversity makes the task daunting; the Census Bureau can’t overcome the significant barriers to a full count on its own. It takes a village (to borrow a well-worn phrase), with state and local officials, civic, faith, and business leaders, and community organizations all working to build bridges between the people they serve and Uncle Sam.

Except … if you’re a Democratic public official or a group advocating for the poor or people of color, you’d better watch your back. Because conservative opinion leaders are throwing mud already, accusing anyone remotely connected to the Democratic party of trying to “manipulate” the census results. Last week, Townhall.com columnist Joel Mowbray suggested that Ohio Treasurer Ken Boyce, who heads the state’s Complete Count Committee, would likely find a way to artificially inflate the count in “Democratic strongholds” with help from “cutthroat Obama advisers.”

The basis for the charge?  Umm, none.  Mowbray dreams up a scenario in which his obvious political nemesis would sprinkle liberal-leaning neighborhoods with Be Counted forms that could be used to ramp up the count.  The success of this supposed scheme assumes that the Census Bureau doesn’t have strict protocols in place for adding people on Be Counted forms to the census (it does), as well as statistical programs designed to catch unusual patterns in the count (it’s happened before, but never to the advantage of hard-to-count areas, trust me).  But we digress, because who needs facts when the only point is to throw the long bomb and whip the crowd into a frenzy.

Speaking of fourth and long, the Super Bowl provided another opportunity for conservatives to take cheap shots at the Census Bureau, presumably with the goal of manipulating public opinion about the decennial count. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) chastised the agency for wasting taxpayer dollars on an advertisement during the big game. I think the gentleman from Arizona cut Investment 101. Let’s see: We spend $2.5 million to reach the largest ever television audience, to help us save $90 million for each one percent of households that census takers don’t have to chase down for their responses. Sounds like a bargain to me (but then, I was a social sciences major).

Citizens Against Government Waste called the Super Bowl ads “a colossal waste of money,” saying the promotion amounted to a “glorified public service announcement” (FoxNews.com, 2/3/10). Problem is, the Census Bureau can’t seem to convince elected officials like Sen. McCain to give it free advertising by posting census information on their Web sites.

It’s clear that the census is little more than political sport to some on the right. But their campaign to suppress the count in communities that tend to elect Democrats is on the verge of backfiring. As The Guardian reported on January 29, “Tea Party” movement leaders are answering the call of Glenn Beck and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) by promoting a boycott of the census. The Guardian quoted a former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush, Michael Johns, as saying that conservatives have “legitimate concerns about the integrity of the process.” Hmm, wonder where they got that idea?

But even if the tea partyers are just fed up with all things government, their potential willingness to duck the census spells trouble for those who heretofore thought their anti-census rhetoric might suppress the count only in communities they don’t represent. If response rates start sputtering in traditionally easier-to-count White, middle-income suburban strongholds, conservatives might find that it’s too late for damage control, while the Census Bureau’s merry band of partners carry on their uplifting, empowering message that census participation is beneficial, easy, safe, and – yes – required by law. In the Olympic spirit, victory goes not to those who seek an advantage by accusing their opponents of cheating, but to those who work the hardest to win.

Categories: Complete Count · Politics & Census 2010
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The GOP and Census Hypocrisy

February 2, 2010 · 7 Comments

by Phil Sparks

The mailer has been sent to thousands of households, from Georgia to Minnesota, and tells recipients that “strengthening our party for the (next)… elections will take a massive grassroots effort. As a key facet of our overall campaign strategy, the Republican Party is conducting a Census of Congressional Districts all across America.” The mailer misleads people by saying on the front of the envelope, in bold letters, that the mailer is a Congressional District Census. Above the recipient’s address the mailer says “Census Document Registered To.” There is even a “Census Tracking Code.” notice attached to the mailer.

(Click here to see a PDF copy of the mailer.)

And the object of the mailer itself? To raise money for the GOP. The mailer is straight from the Republican National Committee (RNC). What hypocrisy! This is the political party of Minnesota Republican Congresswomen Michele Bachmann, who urges her constituents not to fill out portions of the real U.S. Census form that will being arriving in mailboxes this year. She says the official census form is too invasive. Well, take a look at this faux effort by the GOP headquarters. The Republican survey asks 36 questions about political affiliation and recent voting activity. These are hardly subjects the real census would be asking anybody.

This is the party of Senator David Vitter, who introduced legislation to mandate that the Census Bureau doesn’t count everybody in America for purposes of Congressional reapportionment. The fundraiser asks recipients: “how much does it concern you that the Democrats have total control of the federal government?”

“The purpose of this document is to gather Republican opinion from across the country and raise a little money,” says RNC spokesman LeRoy Coleman. Unfortunately, this is an old GOP trick. In 2000, the RNC sent out a similar fundraising letter, disguised as a census form. The effort was quickly exposed for what it was– a scam on the American people. I guess the GOP figures that since 10 years have passed, they can gear up for another fundraising effort now that Census 2010 is ready to roll out. In the process, the GOP will tarnish the reputation of Census 2010.

In response to the scam, the head of the American Association for Public Opinion Research wrote to Michael Steele, head of the RNC, expressing dismay at this fundraising scheme masquerading as a Census 2010 form. He said, “there is potential damage to participation in the real Census if U.S. residents view the Census mailing as partisan or just another piece of junk mail.” I don’t think the GOP cares.

One Republican operative was quoted in the political newspaper Politico as declaring: “of course duping people is the point… that’s one of the reasons it works so well… they will likely mail millions this year.”

Categories: Census Form · Politics & Census 2010
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