They say citizenship is not needed to enforce the law and that collecting such data will actually have the opposite effect, that is, it will "undermine the law and weaken voting rights enforcement." Ross says the department needs data on individual neighborhoods to ensure that minority rights are protected and that the 2020 census is the only way to gather such data.Ĭivil rights groups dispute that argument. First, it accepts DOJ's assertion that a citizenship question is needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act. Last night he issued an eight-page memo announcing his decision to add the question to the 2020 survey. Those concerns failed to dissuade the Department of Commerce's Ross, however. The move also drew opposition from Democratic politicians at the state and federal level, who made similar arguments about the impact on the census, which is also used for the once-in-a-decade process of drawing new districts for the U.S. That reaction would further depress response rates, forcing the Census Bureau to spend more money on follow-up and imperiling the accuracy of the count. The request inflamed immigration and human rights advocates, who argued that immigrants already distrustful of the government would avoid filling out the census out of fear that their answers could jeopardize their status in the country. Justice officials say the change is needed to enforce federal laws regarding voter eligibility by determining who is a citizen. Last December, the Department of Justice (DOJ) upset the usual orderly process of nailing down the final version of the census questionnaire by asking the agency to consider adding a question about citizenship. "I think the significant funding boost reflects a bipartisan recognition among lawmakers that the success of the census in all of their districts and states could be in jeopardy and that it is their responsibility to ensure a good outcome." Controversial questionīut preparing for 2020 isn't just about the money. Terri Ann Lowenthal, another veteran census watcher based in Connecticut, thinks the money also reflects self-interest. "Our assessment is the Bureau now has the minimum resources needed to prepare for its constitutional mandate." "The dismal trend of many years of underfunding 2020 census preparations has finally been reversed," says Phil Sparks of the Census Project, a nonprofit coalition based in Washington, D.C. The largess was welcome by census advocates. They also included some $50 million in contingency funding for 2018 that Ross had folded into his new estimate but not requested. Noting that 70% of the costs of the decennial census-now estimated to be $15.6 billion-come in the final 2 years, legislators in effect decided to make a down payment on that total in the 2018 budget. That figure added $187 million to the administration's initial 2018 request, based on what Ross said were cost overruns in a new computer system for coordinating the agency's preparations for the headcount.īut Congress went even further. The 2018 appropriation tops by more than $1 billion the $987 million Ross said the 2020 census needed. (The exact amount has yet to be determined.) And the 2020 census will get the lion's share of that total. Of that total, $2.544 billion goes into the account that funds the 2020 headcount and the American Community Survey, a rolling poll of 3.5 million residents using what had been the long form of the decennial census. That's nearly double the president's 2018 request for the agency and almost $1 billion more than what advocates said it needed in the eighth year of the 10-year cycle to prepare for and conduct the decennial census in April 2020. The spending bill gives the Census Bureau $2.814 billion in the current fiscal year that ends on 30 September. ![]() ![]() Even as advocates praise the generosity Congress showed the Census Bureau in the final 2018 spending bill it passed last week, they worry that a decision made yesterday by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to add a question about citizenship to the upcoming decennial head count could undermine its accuracy.
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