It’s a new decade. Time for a new census and a new batch of controversy.
This year there are concerns that the White House will be overseeing the census instead of the Commerce Department. The mere mention of the census director working “closely with White House senior management” has many Republicans crying foul, going so far as to threaten legal action if the president proceeds with his plan.
However, the GOP is at the center of its own census controversy. A fundraising mailer from the Republican Party is labeled “2010 Congressional District Census.” Some Democrats say the official-looking mailer, whose envelope reads “Do Not Destroy, Official Document,” could be misread as the government census.
One of the largest ongoing battles is how census counts are done. Democrats who want to have accurate estimates of hard-to-count areas support sampling, but Republicans argue that sampling would create a numbers boost that could distort an accurate count.
It’s hard to see why the census is such a political problem until you consider the stakes. The census determines how much federal aid communities can get, divides states into congressional districts and determines how many delegates a state has in the House of Representatives.
The nationwide census, which has taken place every 10 years since 1790, has caused controversy for decades. The 1990 census neglected to count 8 million people, nearly half of whom were children, and double-counted 4 million white Americans. The 2000 census missed nearly 3 million minorities, poor people and children, many times because they were hard to reach. Those mistakes have potentially cost communities funds for education, Medicaid and community services.
With so many controversies surrounding the census count, some politicians say that it’s not a good idea to fill out the questionnaire at all. Michelle Bachmann, a Republican representative for Minnesota, told Glenn Beck that she won’t fill out the census at all.
I think that’s a mistake.
The census determines whether or not communities get funds for important community services. What would Dayton look like if the city was miscounted and couldn’t get funding for food pantries, medical centers, elementary schools and other basic community services? I agree that there are problems in how the census is handled at the bureaucratic level, but I don’t think that’s any reason for my community to suffer. The best thing for everybody to do is to fill out his or her census when it comes in the mail. It’s only 10 questions, and it can make a positive difference in our community.