Head Count

With the completion of the Census head count as required every ten years by the Constitution, the numbers are beginning to arrive at the central counting location in Bowie, Maryland. For the next couple of months, the supercomputer there will be getting quite a workout. This count took up the better part of this year and endured more than its fair share of headaches.

Democrats, particularly in the House, were trying to get sampling as a means of doing the count - this, despite the fact that sampling is not constitutionally permitted. The Constitution requires an actual head count, and that is the way that this count was conducted - just like all other previous counts. The reason Democrats were trying so hard for sampling was they felt it would help stack the odds in favor of their chances of recapturing control of the House of Representatives. With an 11 seat majority in the House, a net loss of six seats by the Republicans would return control of the House to the Democrats, thus making Dick Gephardt (D-MO) the new Speaker and David Bonior (D-MI) either the new House Majority Leader or Majority Whip. Kinda scary, huh?

Other purposes of the Census include the distribution of federal funding to communities according to how much they need as based on population. It also and perhaps most importantly, is used for reapportionment of the House of Representatives. Thus, California and Texas with increasing populations, will more than likely gain a House seat or two, whereas states like Pennsylvania and possibly Michigan may lose a seat. This could affect future control of the House in two ways.

One way would be by reassigning seats to other areas, they could be taking a seat from a Republican stronghold and moving it to a Democratic stronghold; or the opposite could apply. The other part of reapportionment that is often controversial is in the practice of gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing up boundary lines for congressional districts, so as to make it predominantly white, black, Hispanic or whatever. Both the Democrats and the Republicans make every effort to make sure that the boundary lines stack the odds in their favor in an effort to either retain control of the House or to recapture it.

The Washington Post has a feature in its On Politics section where you punch in your Zip Code to find out more about politics where you live. In entering the Zip Code for an area in Dallas, Texas where a friend of mine used to live, I found that the Zip Code is a part of three different congressional districts. It just depended on what part of the Zip Code you lived in as to who your congressional representative was.

One of the flaws in the current method of doing a Census count is that some people are missed in the count, such as homeless and quite possibly military personnel deployed on temporary assignment outside the Continental USA, among others. In addition, there are those who are counted twice - such as the people in New York who have an apartment in Manhattan and a home in Sag Harbor. Census forms come to both addresses and they get filled out and sent in, thus making the same person be counted twice.

It has clearly been shown that the Census head counting method needs some work done in the methodology of getting a fair and accurate head count. I also believe that this next count will reflect the increasing ethnic and racial diversity that America became during the 1990’s will continue into the next century.

And as we do, those of us who have been around a little longer than the others need to remember that we are indeed a nation of immigrants, and that the wave we have coming in now, provide a host of skills that will make us a better and stronger nation that we would have been without them.

The beauty of this nation is that we are a work in progress, always changing and always progressing. The changes I have seen in my lifetime have been many and with few exceptions, have been fun to watch and been good for the country both in the short and long term.

The opportunity to conduct a head count for the Bureau of the Census comes only once every ten years. Perhaps when the next one comes in 2010, we can use it as a measuring stick to see how we as a nation are doing. For despite all our flaws, we are still the envy of the rest of the world.

You can e-mail your comments to Timothy at trollins@idirect.com.

Copyright © 2000 by Timothy Rollins.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission