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The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. statistician

142 points by hhs 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
CincinnatiMan 6y ago
> This means [it eliminated] literally a third of the time allocated for the Census Bureau to knock on doors, to try to enumerate the hard-to-count individuals, which happen to be African Americans, Latinx populations, immigrants, people in heavily transitory situations, tribal lands, some Asians. Random question but why would some races have more trouble than others responding to the census? Is it more to do with poverty than race? Or is there a cultural distrust of the census that aligns with race?
- Retric 6y ago
  Poor people move around vastly more frequently and often end up temporarily sharing living spaces.
  - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    Sounds like it's not discrimination against race then, but of economic status. The disenfranchisement of poor people.
    - viraptor 6y ago
      It's not mutually exclusive. Discrimination against a race does increase poverty. And poverty increases discrimination against a race.
    - learc83 6y ago
      Poor white people aren't likely to have an undocumented person living in their household though. People in that situation are much less likely to talk to government employees or to fill out census forms in the first place. So yes it's is undercounting poor people, but also disproportionately immigrants and relatives of immigrants.
      - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
        Poor white people aren't likely to have an undocumented - person of color - living in their household. I've known a number of local households that had undocumented Canadians, Brits and Germans. It's been my experience that Americans who are hyper-concerned with illegal immigration, aren't grinding their teeth over these nationalities.
        learc83 6y ago
        There's definitely a double standard. But Canadians and Europeans make up less than 5% of the total number of undocumented immigrants in the US. So I still stand by my point that poor white people aren't likely to have undocumented people living in their household at all. Regardless of race. >I've known a number of local households that had undocumented Canadians, Brits and Germans. Also how many of those households were poor? There isn't nearly as much incentive for a poor Canadian, Brit, or German to come here as an undocumented immigrant because they'd be giving up guaranteed health care and far more permissive social services.
        WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
        Let's consider this conversely. Do you feel that the tone, tenor and actions (of immigration resistance) would be different, in any way, if Euro descendants made up 95% of immigrants?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 6y ago
      It’s easy to discriminate if you allow proxy’s. Just find something that hurts them more than it hurts you and repeat. Race is already being used as a proxy for political affiliation. Using a proxy for Race as a proxy for political affiliation is less efficient, but still effective.
  - 0_____0 6y ago
    I came across a census worker in Portland who was doggedly trying to track down a former tenant of the house I was staying at. Having knocked doors I appreciate the hustle and tenacity the people on the ground for the census have.
  - rubyist5eva 6y ago
    Not all non-white people are poor.
    - Schiendelman 6y ago
      Please don’t strawman on HN.
      - rubyist5eva 6y ago
        I didn't strawman anything. Original question was asking about race discrimination and the response was about "poor people".
        kube-system 6y ago
        The original question asked > Is it more to do with poverty than race
        rubyist5eva 6y ago
        Fair enough, I misinterpreted the original question because the quoted part of the article did not reference poverty. Thank you.
    - RonaldRaygun 6y ago
      > Is it more to do with poverty than race? I believe they were specifically addressing this part of the parent comment. A benevolent reading of the reply would not point towards this rather blatantly racist interpretation of its meaning.
- bo1024 6y ago
  There are many reasons. They discuss poverty in the article. I would agree with cultural distrust of government officials. And very importantly, everything around the citizenship question/issue. > The notion of these counts ever being used for enforcement — basically targeting high population, low citizenship-count blocks for ICE raids or whatever — that would be really, really problematic. Stepping back, think in general about a government that wants to target, arrest, and deport certain groups of people, that is also going door to door and trying to establish records of who everyone is and where they live. Because of the bad optics of this, the US census has traditionally been extremely independent from law enforcement. The government has recently been attacking this barrier e.g. with the citizenship question and other things discussed in the article. Historically speaking, you might argue marginalized groups in such scenarios would be foolish to trust the census.
  - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    think in general about a government that wants to target, arrest, and deport certain groups of people Yes. They are deporting people who didn't come into the country legally. Its important to have an accurate count of citizens in the country since that's who votes. There is an upcoming Supreme Court case that will determine if non citizens should be counted for House representation. You may not agree with it, but it is important to know. With that said, I don't think ending the census early is the right way to handle this issue at all, it's just slimy.
    - jimktrains2 6y ago
      The constitution specifically says the census is a count of all "free Persons", not only citizens. Obviously SCOTUS will weigh in now, but I think it's important to realize the actual wording of what the census is.
      - kevinmchugh 6y ago
        14th amendment drops the "free"
- tsjq 6y ago
  Poverty, mainly. The article mentions: > If you’re hard to count, you’re hard to count. The people who are hardest to count, the ones we worry most about in terms of undercount, are the same folks whose families don’t have food at night or don’t have a job. They’re worried about getting tossed out because they can’t make the rent. Or they’re ill and don’t have health insurance. Those folks tend not to have participating in the census at the top of their minds because they have basic needs that have to be met — for themselves, their children and sometimes for their parents and grandparents.
- watwut 6y ago
  American blacks were more hit by corona virus for example. American black are incarcerated more often which affects whole community. Ex prisoners and their families have unique housing stability problems. Their family structure is different - more single women with or without children as males are not available. Also, more tight communities. Less of nuclear family more of extended family. White people live more segregated per socioeconomic class, black mix more. Blacks and white are segregated anyway, so whatever you do you are not reaching both.
- parsimo2010 6y ago
  Statistician (but not a Census statistician) here with a few answers: Black people have a higher than average non-response rate, even controlling for income, possibly due to a cultural mistrust of government institutions (for good reason). Recent immigrants may not be able to read the language the census was mailed to them in, and may also be hesitant to respond due to fears of deportation- the point of the census isn’t to hunt down illegals, and people here legally shouldn’t be deported anyway, but the current administration hasn’t done much to reassure people. These effects will apply in differing amounts to Latino and Asian communities. Finally, the bulk of the census is conducted by mail, and it takes a while to complete. Families without a permanent home might not be counted because they are only temporarily living with another family when the census arrives at that house, or they might be moving between addresses so that they aren’t counted in the response by any household at those addresses. This also disproportionately affects poor people and minorities. And at least for me, I only received instructions in the mail telling me to do the census online. Not all families have easy access to the internet, and some just can’t be bothered to take the time to respond. This again disproportionately affects poor people and minorities. To try to counteract these problems, the Census hires people to walk on foot and get responses from low coverage areas. But if you cut down on that effort, you’re going to miss some. One of the results of this could be that the census shows fewer poor people in some cities which will affect government funding decisions. But the tough part for a statistician is showing how much time is needed to walk around and get the coverage that you desire (and how many people you hire to do it). You can make some relatively small changes to your assumptions and get different answers. But cutting the time by a third is a pretty dramatic cut, so without looking at the details, I’m guessing that the coverage has decreased. That’s generally a bad thing since a census is supposed to be a full count of the population and not a sample. Edit: I’ll also tack on a more nefarious interpretation than just using the Census to cut federal aid money to some cities. The Census is also used to portion electoral college votes for presidential elections. Because of the communities that are affected by this undercoverage, states that normally vote Democrat are more likely to lose votes than states that normally vote Republican. So this could make it easier for a Republican president to be elected in the next couple elections (the votes for the current election will not change however).
  - 6y ago
- zaroth 6y ago
  Q: Do you have any sense for how many people might have been counted had the census efforts continued to Oct. 31? > It’s not going to be much. If you’re hard to count, you’re hard to count. The people who are hardest to count, the ones we worry most about in terms of undercount, are the same folks whose families don’t have food at night or don’t have a job. They’re worried about getting tossed out because they can’t make the rent. Or they’re ill and don’t have health insurance. Those folks tend not to have participating in the census at the top of their minds because they have basic needs that have to be met — for themselves, their children and sometimes for their parents and grandparents. > Because of those things that those people have to deal with, you actually could have extended the time for another month on top of that and you’d only get marginal gains. The census was already in a tough position. It would definitely help to get as much time as possible, because as people become acquainted with how to deal with Covid, they can do the grassroots effort that’s needed to get people to participate. But it’s going to be a marginal increase. At the end of the day, the die has been cast for quite a while: There are going to be undercounts of communities of color. The only question is how large — and is it so large that action needs to be taken in the form of litigation or legislation.
  - laverya 6y ago
    I'd really like to know how large the undercount is estimated to be. Is it 1%? 0.1%? 0.01%? Because that changes how I think of this. If you've undercounted LA county population by 1,000 that's a completely different beast than 100,000.
- NelsonMinar 6y ago
  Among other things, safety for minorities. The census is supposed to be secret and never used for any sort of law enforcement, etc. But in our living memory that protection was abused. The US census was used to help round up Americans of Japanese descent and put them in concentration camps in the 40s. It'd be nice to think that could never happen again. But then you had the Trump people literally trying to put a citizenship question on the census despite every expert saying it was a mistake. The intent was clearly to intimidate (we have this in writing). The question ended up being left off but the damage was already somewhat done. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/17/us/report-says-census-bureau-helped-relocate-japanese.html https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/17/us/report-says-census-bur... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/03/secret-use-of-census-info-helped-send-japanese-americans-to-internment-camps-in-wwii/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/03...
tsjq 6y ago
https://archive.is/ZuQ9n https://archive.is/ZuQ9n
Retric 6y ago
Trying to sidestep democracy is how you end up with armed revolt. I wish both sides would realizing their destroying people’s faith in the system and how quickly that can destabilize everything.
- tonetheman 6y ago
  Ha be really clear dude in this case, in this article it is not both sides. It is solidly the current administration and no one else. Our current party in power has done this. So to retype what you said more correctly. "I wish the Republicans would realize they are destroying..."
  - wwwwwwwww 6y ago
    Nobody is destroying anything. This sounds more like institutional interests being defended by those who work in the institution that is forced to be more efficient. Many will complain, and scream exaggerated warnings. But in the end, it will help to make things better.
    - Retric 6y ago
      Ending things early without warning isn’t being more efficient, it’s simply not finishing the job.
    - jimktrains2 6y ago
      What's being cut short isn't waste but the number of times that a non-responsive house can be visited. It's not some grand excise of waste, it's saying that the administration doesn't want to follow the procedures layout out by the census department to get an accurate count given previous data.
- BoiledCabbage 6y ago
  > I wish both sides would realizing their destroying people’s faith in the system And I wish people would stop saying 'both sides' when it's 95% only one side. That's the issue. One side is now against census so people aren't represented, restricting voting so people don't get a say, and people keep saying 'both sides'.
CyberRabbi 6y ago
From what I can tell, a second (third?) census extension is being denied. It’s not that the census is unusually being cut short. I got a different impression from this article.
- learc83 6y ago
  The census bureau was original granted an extension that has been rolled back. It's not being cut "unusually" short, but the pandemic drastically impacted the census bureau's ability to do their work, and we are giving them less extra time than they say they need.
  - mkl 6y ago
    I'm surprised they're not just cancelling or postponing it. In 2011, earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, displaced thousands of people. The national census scheduled for the following month was cancelled, and a replacement was later organised for 2013. I think the theory was that delayed statistics were better than unreliable and incomplete statistics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_census#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_census#History
    - mcintyre1994 6y ago
      The US constitution requires them to do it every 10 years, and it was last done in 2010. More cynically it’s been really politicised and not doing it this year would risk the Democrats being in power to do it next year.
      - mkl 6y ago
        Wow, it's kind of astounding to me that which party is in power could make a difference to a census. Being in the country's constitution does make it difficult to delay.
    - Schiendelman 6y ago
      I think our government is unable to budget without it. And isn’t it constitutionally mandated?
VLM 6y ago
I realize for political reasons we have to only support one side via extreme sophistry, essentially the whole topic is a giant dog whistle test to make sure our community is politically pure. However its VERY hard to ignore the reality that essentially 100% of the US population has no difficulty, on average, kinda paying electric bills and property tax bills and phone bills. Part of the sophistry is pretending that no non-white people are capable of responding to documents mailed to them and as such will be entirely disenfranchised. However, the actual percentage simply cannot be that high as 73 percent of households have satellite or cable TV and thus are at least occasionally responding to mailed documents. 73 percent of the population isn't even white anymore. I mean, yeah, as a political purity test we can rally around Orange Man Bad and try to one up each other in our two minutes hate to eliminate diversity of opinion while encouraging groupthink, but reality is so far from the politics in this particular situation that its hard to play along. And if an individual can't stomach the extreme virtue signallers, may as well join the reality-based community and just vote Trump. So ironically I don't think this topic is a PRODUCTIVE purity test even from a purely leftist perspective.
- Schiendelman 6y ago
  You’re so wrapped up in buzzwords you’ve lost the real conversations.
- rc_mob 6y ago
  What a goofy comment
- stdbrouw 6y ago
  You seem to be extremely certain of your position and seem to find it impossible to believe that Robert Santos, the statistician in question, could have any motive other than a political one in sounding the alarm. However, "if people can pay their electric bill then surely they can respond to the census" is not a fact and it's not a logical argument, it's just your gut feeling, which you seem to find a superior source of truth to what experts are saying. Why?
  - woo49 6y ago
ccaleb 6y ago
This is only tangentially related, but I think it provides important context to this discussion about the motives of those involved. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/census-citizenship-question-hofeller.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/census-citizenship-que...
- woo49 6y ago
  Both sides have ulterior motives. Counting illegal immigrants in the census helps Democrats because liberal states have more of them. This is just a fact. You may think we should still count as many of them in the census, that's fine. But don't pretend there is no issue with one side of the argument. Mentioning motives of one side but not the other is naive. It also prevents us from having a real conversation about the trade offs at hand.
  - atoav 6y ago
    Not American but I think a census should reflect reality. This means: which people (regardless of legal status) are currently living in an given area. How this then translates into policy is an entirely different question, but essentially misrepresenting what should be objective reality for cheap political points is asking for trouble. A bit like closing your eyes: it doesn't make things go away.
    - mensetmanusman 6y ago
      American, and agree. It should also include the average amount of tourists (steady state) so that the presence of more people in an area get sufficient resources (to serve citizens and non-citizens alike).
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    That's not an ulterior motive, it's a direct motive for counting everybody. An ulterior motive would be expressing support for a counting method with a statement about the technical superiority of the method, but really preferring it because of some bias inherent in it. The "ulterior" part comes from the motivation being different than what is publicly expressed.
censusthrowaway 6y ago
Here is some inside info. I work for the Census. It is a highly dysfunctional organization. Nothing to do with current administration. The various software the local offices use actively hinders the job of management and enumerators (the people who come to your door). Hundreds of and hundred of millions of dollars and incalculable time is wasted just due to this. Imagine the worst ERP or CRM that you have ever used, this is worse and approximately 250 offices use it across the country, and this inhibits the jobs of nearly half a million people. Talk to any Area manager, Lead Census Field Manager/Field manager, Office Operation Supervisor, or Office Clerk. They will tell you how they have to fight the software to get their job done. Truth is the Census could be done with half the people. There is plain incompetence in middle and higher management. Those making decision on software and marketing seem to have no understanding of the job those in local offices do. It is so bad local offices don't really have an accurate idea who even is still employed in the field working cases. Why doesn't this change? Nobody wants to lose their job. Middle management wants numbers and to hit goals. It doesn't matter if the numbers are actually accurate. Often they will not be. Notes about cases (organizations we are trying to count their people/or individual housing units) pile up inside systems that nobody has time to read. It is easier to close a case then actually resolve it and accurately count people. Not only is there no incentive to do the job correctly, it will actually get you in trouble if you do things right. Yes this is a random throwaway account on HN. But to verify just ask nearly anyone who works for the Census. I hope to post more on this later when I have time. Feel free to ask any questions.
- NelsonMinar 6y ago
  A big part of why Census doesn't operate better is the Republicans chronically underfund it. This entire census cycle was the Trump Administration's responsibility. If Census lacks the tools and capabilities to execute it, it's on them.
  - censusthrowaway 6y ago
    I am not a republican, but this isn't true. There is so much waste and inefficiency. The Census wastes billions of dollars right now. Again ask almost any Census employee about how much time an money is wasted. Not everything is Trump's fault, he isn't that capable.
nine_zeros 6y ago
Things that you hear from Turkey or Brazil or Belarus or some other distant "third-world" or even "communist" countries are happening right in our own backyard. If we were not the superpower country, we would have already got "sanctions" but no one can yet. But the next time America sanctions other countries for human rights or governance, rest assured they will laugh it off.
cs702 6y ago
Successful management of anything -- a startup, a corporation, or an entire country -- requires successful measurement. Successful measurement requires collecting good, accurate data. Sabotaging the census is tantamount to sabotaging the government's ability to run the country. It's the sort of thing that in my mind should be able to happen only in poorly-run countries managed by corrupt regimes. The leading statistician claiming that the census is being sabotaged, Robert Santos, was recently elected as President of the American Statistical Association. We should probably take his claims seriously. I find it almost unbelievable that this is happening in the United States of America.
koboll 6y ago
I am a little skeptical about how dire this will really be. Census takers are allowed to guesstimate if non-responses reasonably make them believe they are undercounting: >In instances where the bureau is unsure of the number of residents at an address after a field visit, its population characteristics are inferred from its nearest similar neighbor (hot-deck imputation). This practice has effects across many areas, but is seen by some as controversial.[6] However, the practice was ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Utah v. Evans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Census#Procedure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Census#Procedure
gvd 6y ago
Could they run a new census? Is there a rule that limits how often it is done?

142 points by hhs 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

> This means [it eliminated] literally a third of the time allocated for the Census Bureau to knock on doors, to try to enumerate the hard-to-count individuals, which happen to be African Americans, Latinx populations, immigrants, people in heavily transitory situations, tribal lands, some Asians. Random question but why would some races have more trouble than others responding to the census? Is it more to do with poverty than race? Or is there a cultural distrust of the census that aligns with race?

Retric 6y ago
Poor people move around vastly more frequently and often end up temporarily sharing living spaces.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  Sounds like it's not discrimination against race then, but of economic status. The disenfranchisement of poor people.
  - viraptor 6y ago
    It's not mutually exclusive. Discrimination against a race does increase poverty. And poverty increases discrimination against a race.
  - learc83 6y ago
    Poor white people aren't likely to have an undocumented person living in their household though. People in that situation are much less likely to talk to government employees or to fill out census forms in the first place. So yes it's is undercounting poor people, but also disproportionately immigrants and relatives of immigrants.
    - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
      Poor white people aren't likely to have an undocumented - person of color - living in their household. I've known a number of local households that had undocumented Canadians, Brits and Germans. It's been my experience that Americans who are hyper-concerned with illegal immigration, aren't grinding their teeth over these nationalities.
      - learc83 6y ago
        There's definitely a double standard. But Canadians and Europeans make up less than 5% of the total number of undocumented immigrants in the US. So I still stand by my point that poor white people aren't likely to have undocumented people living in their household at all. Regardless of race. >I've known a number of local households that had undocumented Canadians, Brits and Germans. Also how many of those households were poor? There isn't nearly as much incentive for a poor Canadian, Brit, or German to come here as an undocumented immigrant because they'd be giving up guaranteed health care and far more permissive social services.
        WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
        Let's consider this conversely. Do you feel that the tone, tenor and actions (of immigration resistance) would be different, in any way, if Euro descendants made up 95% of immigrants?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 6y ago
    It’s easy to discriminate if you allow proxy’s. Just find something that hurts them more than it hurts you and repeat. Race is already being used as a proxy for political affiliation. Using a proxy for Race as a proxy for political affiliation is less efficient, but still effective.
- 0_____0 6y ago
  I came across a census worker in Portland who was doggedly trying to track down a former tenant of the house I was staying at. Having knocked doors I appreciate the hustle and tenacity the people on the ground for the census have.
- rubyist5eva 6y ago
  Not all non-white people are poor.
  - Schiendelman 6y ago
    Please don’t strawman on HN.
    - rubyist5eva 6y ago
      I didn't strawman anything. Original question was asking about race discrimination and the response was about "poor people".
      - kube-system 6y ago
        The original question asked > Is it more to do with poverty than race
        rubyist5eva 6y ago
        Fair enough, I misinterpreted the original question because the quoted part of the article did not reference poverty. Thank you.
  - RonaldRaygun 6y ago
    > Is it more to do with poverty than race? I believe they were specifically addressing this part of the parent comment. A benevolent reading of the reply would not point towards this rather blatantly racist interpretation of its meaning.
bo1024 6y ago
There are many reasons. They discuss poverty in the article. I would agree with cultural distrust of government officials. And very importantly, everything around the citizenship question/issue. > The notion of these counts ever being used for enforcement — basically targeting high population, low citizenship-count blocks for ICE raids or whatever — that would be really, really problematic. Stepping back, think in general about a government that wants to target, arrest, and deport certain groups of people, that is also going door to door and trying to establish records of who everyone is and where they live. Because of the bad optics of this, the US census has traditionally been extremely independent from law enforcement. The government has recently been attacking this barrier e.g. with the citizenship question and other things discussed in the article. Historically speaking, you might argue marginalized groups in such scenarios would be foolish to trust the census.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  think in general about a government that wants to target, arrest, and deport certain groups of people Yes. They are deporting people who didn't come into the country legally. Its important to have an accurate count of citizens in the country since that's who votes. There is an upcoming Supreme Court case that will determine if non citizens should be counted for House representation. You may not agree with it, but it is important to know. With that said, I don't think ending the census early is the right way to handle this issue at all, it's just slimy.
  - jimktrains2 6y ago
    The constitution specifically says the census is a count of all "free Persons", not only citizens. Obviously SCOTUS will weigh in now, but I think it's important to realize the actual wording of what the census is.
    - kevinmchugh 6y ago
      14th amendment drops the "free"
tsjq 6y ago
Poverty, mainly. The article mentions: > If you’re hard to count, you’re hard to count. The people who are hardest to count, the ones we worry most about in terms of undercount, are the same folks whose families don’t have food at night or don’t have a job. They’re worried about getting tossed out because they can’t make the rent. Or they’re ill and don’t have health insurance. Those folks tend not to have participating in the census at the top of their minds because they have basic needs that have to be met — for themselves, their children and sometimes for their parents and grandparents.
watwut 6y ago
American blacks were more hit by corona virus for example. American black are incarcerated more often which affects whole community. Ex prisoners and their families have unique housing stability problems. Their family structure is different - more single women with or without children as males are not available. Also, more tight communities. Less of nuclear family more of extended family. White people live more segregated per socioeconomic class, black mix more. Blacks and white are segregated anyway, so whatever you do you are not reaching both.
parsimo2010 6y ago
Statistician (but not a Census statistician) here with a few answers: Black people have a higher than average non-response rate, even controlling for income, possibly due to a cultural mistrust of government institutions (for good reason). Recent immigrants may not be able to read the language the census was mailed to them in, and may also be hesitant to respond due to fears of deportation- the point of the census isn’t to hunt down illegals, and people here legally shouldn’t be deported anyway, but the current administration hasn’t done much to reassure people. These effects will apply in differing amounts to Latino and Asian communities. Finally, the bulk of the census is conducted by mail, and it takes a while to complete. Families without a permanent home might not be counted because they are only temporarily living with another family when the census arrives at that house, or they might be moving between addresses so that they aren’t counted in the response by any household at those addresses. This also disproportionately affects poor people and minorities. And at least for me, I only received instructions in the mail telling me to do the census online. Not all families have easy access to the internet, and some just can’t be bothered to take the time to respond. This again disproportionately affects poor people and minorities. To try to counteract these problems, the Census hires people to walk on foot and get responses from low coverage areas. But if you cut down on that effort, you’re going to miss some. One of the results of this could be that the census shows fewer poor people in some cities which will affect government funding decisions. But the tough part for a statistician is showing how much time is needed to walk around and get the coverage that you desire (and how many people you hire to do it). You can make some relatively small changes to your assumptions and get different answers. But cutting the time by a third is a pretty dramatic cut, so without looking at the details, I’m guessing that the coverage has decreased. That’s generally a bad thing since a census is supposed to be a full count of the population and not a sample. Edit: I’ll also tack on a more nefarious interpretation than just using the Census to cut federal aid money to some cities. The Census is also used to portion electoral college votes for presidential elections. Because of the communities that are affected by this undercoverage, states that normally vote Democrat are more likely to lose votes than states that normally vote Republican. So this could make it easier for a Republican president to be elected in the next couple elections (the votes for the current election will not change however).
- 6y ago
zaroth 6y ago
Q: Do you have any sense for how many people might have been counted had the census efforts continued to Oct. 31? > It’s not going to be much. If you’re hard to count, you’re hard to count. The people who are hardest to count, the ones we worry most about in terms of undercount, are the same folks whose families don’t have food at night or don’t have a job. They’re worried about getting tossed out because they can’t make the rent. Or they’re ill and don’t have health insurance. Those folks tend not to have participating in the census at the top of their minds because they have basic needs that have to be met — for themselves, their children and sometimes for their parents and grandparents. > Because of those things that those people have to deal with, you actually could have extended the time for another month on top of that and you’d only get marginal gains. The census was already in a tough position. It would definitely help to get as much time as possible, because as people become acquainted with how to deal with Covid, they can do the grassroots effort that’s needed to get people to participate. But it’s going to be a marginal increase. At the end of the day, the die has been cast for quite a while: There are going to be undercounts of communities of color. The only question is how large — and is it so large that action needs to be taken in the form of litigation or legislation.
- laverya 6y ago
  I'd really like to know how large the undercount is estimated to be. Is it 1%? 0.1%? 0.01%? Because that changes how I think of this. If you've undercounted LA county population by 1,000 that's a completely different beast than 100,000.
NelsonMinar 6y ago
Among other things, safety for minorities. The census is supposed to be secret and never used for any sort of law enforcement, etc. But in our living memory that protection was abused. The US census was used to help round up Americans of Japanese descent and put them in concentration camps in the 40s. It'd be nice to think that could never happen again. But then you had the Trump people literally trying to put a citizenship question on the census despite every expert saying it was a mistake. The intent was clearly to intimidate (we have this in writing). The question ended up being left off but the damage was already somewhat done. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/17/us/report-says-census-bureau-helped-relocate-japanese.html https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/17/us/report-says-census-bur... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/03/secret-use-of-census-info-helped-send-japanese-americans-to-internment-camps-in-wwii/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/03...

tsjq 6y ago

https://archive.is/ZuQ9n https://archive.is/ZuQ9n

Retric 6y ago

Trying to sidestep democracy is how you end up with armed revolt. I wish both sides would realizing their destroying people’s faith in the system and how quickly that can destabilize everything.

tonetheman 6y ago
Ha be really clear dude in this case, in this article it is not both sides. It is solidly the current administration and no one else. Our current party in power has done this. So to retype what you said more correctly. "I wish the Republicans would realize they are destroying..."
- wwwwwwwww 6y ago
  Nobody is destroying anything. This sounds more like institutional interests being defended by those who work in the institution that is forced to be more efficient. Many will complain, and scream exaggerated warnings. But in the end, it will help to make things better.
  - Retric 6y ago
    Ending things early without warning isn’t being more efficient, it’s simply not finishing the job.
  - jimktrains2 6y ago
    What's being cut short isn't waste but the number of times that a non-responsive house can be visited. It's not some grand excise of waste, it's saying that the administration doesn't want to follow the procedures layout out by the census department to get an accurate count given previous data.
BoiledCabbage 6y ago
> I wish both sides would realizing their destroying people’s faith in the system And I wish people would stop saying 'both sides' when it's 95% only one side. That's the issue. One side is now against census so people aren't represented, restricting voting so people don't get a say, and people keep saying 'both sides'.

CyberRabbi 6y ago

From what I can tell, a second (third?) census extension is being denied. It’s not that the census is unusually being cut short. I got a different impression from this article.

learc83 6y ago
The census bureau was original granted an extension that has been rolled back. It's not being cut "unusually" short, but the pandemic drastically impacted the census bureau's ability to do their work, and we are giving them less extra time than they say they need.
- mkl 6y ago
  I'm surprised they're not just cancelling or postponing it. In 2011, earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, displaced thousands of people. The national census scheduled for the following month was cancelled, and a replacement was later organised for 2013. I think the theory was that delayed statistics were better than unreliable and incomplete statistics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_census#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_census#History
  - mcintyre1994 6y ago
    The US constitution requires them to do it every 10 years, and it was last done in 2010. More cynically it’s been really politicised and not doing it this year would risk the Democrats being in power to do it next year.
    - mkl 6y ago
      Wow, it's kind of astounding to me that which party is in power could make a difference to a census. Being in the country's constitution does make it difficult to delay.
  - Schiendelman 6y ago
    I think our government is unable to budget without it. And isn’t it constitutionally mandated?

VLM 6y ago

I realize for political reasons we have to only support one side via extreme sophistry, essentially the whole topic is a giant dog whistle test to make sure our community is politically pure. However its VERY hard to ignore the reality that essentially 100% of the US population has no difficulty, on average, kinda paying electric bills and property tax bills and phone bills. Part of the sophistry is pretending that no non-white people are capable of responding to documents mailed to them and as such will be entirely disenfranchised. However, the actual percentage simply cannot be that high as 73 percent of households have satellite or cable TV and thus are at least occasionally responding to mailed documents. 73 percent of the population isn't even white anymore. I mean, yeah, as a political purity test we can rally around Orange Man Bad and try to one up each other in our two minutes hate to eliminate diversity of opinion while encouraging groupthink, but reality is so far from the politics in this particular situation that its hard to play along. And if an individual can't stomach the extreme virtue signallers, may as well join the reality-based community and just vote Trump. So ironically I don't think this topic is a PRODUCTIVE purity test even from a purely leftist perspective.

Schiendelman 6y ago
You’re so wrapped up in buzzwords you’ve lost the real conversations.
rc_mob 6y ago
What a goofy comment
stdbrouw 6y ago
You seem to be extremely certain of your position and seem to find it impossible to believe that Robert Santos, the statistician in question, could have any motive other than a political one in sounding the alarm. However, "if people can pay their electric bill then surely they can respond to the census" is not a fact and it's not a logical argument, it's just your gut feeling, which you seem to find a superior source of truth to what experts are saying. Why?
- woo49 6y ago

ccaleb 6y ago

This is only tangentially related, but I think it provides important context to this discussion about the motives of those involved. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/census-citizenship-question-hofeller.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/census-citizenship-que...

woo49 6y ago
Both sides have ulterior motives. Counting illegal immigrants in the census helps Democrats because liberal states have more of them. This is just a fact. You may think we should still count as many of them in the census, that's fine. But don't pretend there is no issue with one side of the argument. Mentioning motives of one side but not the other is naive. It also prevents us from having a real conversation about the trade offs at hand.
- atoav 6y ago
  Not American but I think a census should reflect reality. This means: which people (regardless of legal status) are currently living in an given area. How this then translates into policy is an entirely different question, but essentially misrepresenting what should be objective reality for cheap political points is asking for trouble. A bit like closing your eyes: it doesn't make things go away.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    American, and agree. It should also include the average amount of tourists (steady state) so that the presence of more people in an area get sufficient resources (to serve citizens and non-citizens alike).
- maxerickson 6y ago
  That's not an ulterior motive, it's a direct motive for counting everybody. An ulterior motive would be expressing support for a counting method with a statement about the technical superiority of the method, but really preferring it because of some bias inherent in it. The "ulterior" part comes from the motivation being different than what is publicly expressed.

censusthrowaway 6y ago

Here is some inside info. I work for the Census. It is a highly dysfunctional organization. Nothing to do with current administration. The various software the local offices use actively hinders the job of management and enumerators (the people who come to your door). Hundreds of and hundred of millions of dollars and incalculable time is wasted just due to this. Imagine the worst ERP or CRM that you have ever used, this is worse and approximately 250 offices use it across the country, and this inhibits the jobs of nearly half a million people. Talk to any Area manager, Lead Census Field Manager/Field manager, Office Operation Supervisor, or Office Clerk. They will tell you how they have to fight the software to get their job done. Truth is the Census could be done with half the people. There is plain incompetence in middle and higher management. Those making decision on software and marketing seem to have no understanding of the job those in local offices do. It is so bad local offices don't really have an accurate idea who even is still employed in the field working cases. Why doesn't this change? Nobody wants to lose their job. Middle management wants numbers and to hit goals. It doesn't matter if the numbers are actually accurate. Often they will not be. Notes about cases (organizations we are trying to count their people/or individual housing units) pile up inside systems that nobody has time to read. It is easier to close a case then actually resolve it and accurately count people. Not only is there no incentive to do the job correctly, it will actually get you in trouble if you do things right. Yes this is a random throwaway account on HN. But to verify just ask nearly anyone who works for the Census. I hope to post more on this later when I have time. Feel free to ask any questions.

NelsonMinar 6y ago
A big part of why Census doesn't operate better is the Republicans chronically underfund it. This entire census cycle was the Trump Administration's responsibility. If Census lacks the tools and capabilities to execute it, it's on them.
- censusthrowaway 6y ago
  I am not a republican, but this isn't true. There is so much waste and inefficiency. The Census wastes billions of dollars right now. Again ask almost any Census employee about how much time an money is wasted. Not everything is Trump's fault, he isn't that capable.

nine_zeros 6y ago

Things that you hear from Turkey or Brazil or Belarus or some other distant "third-world" or even "communist" countries are happening right in our own backyard. If we were not the superpower country, we would have already got "sanctions" but no one can yet. But the next time America sanctions other countries for human rights or governance, rest assured they will laugh it off.

cs702 6y ago

Successful management of anything -- a startup, a corporation, or an entire country -- requires successful measurement. Successful measurement requires collecting good, accurate data. Sabotaging the census is tantamount to sabotaging the government's ability to run the country. It's the sort of thing that in my mind should be able to happen only in poorly-run countries managed by corrupt regimes. The leading statistician claiming that the census is being sabotaged, Robert Santos, was recently elected as President of the American Statistical Association. We should probably take his claims seriously. I find it almost unbelievable that this is happening in the United States of America.

koboll 6y ago

I am a little skeptical about how dire this will really be. Census takers are allowed to guesstimate if non-responses reasonably make them believe they are undercounting: >In instances where the bureau is unsure of the number of residents at an address after a field visit, its population characteristics are inferred from its nearest similar neighbor (hot-deck imputation). This practice has effects across many areas, but is seen by some as controversial.[6] However, the practice was ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Utah v. Evans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Census#Procedure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Census#Procedure

gvd 6y ago

Could they run a new census? Is there a rule that limits how often it is done?