Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 16, 1990 TAG: 9004160222
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The usual organizational foul-ups, blamed on the Postal Service and independent contractors, account for some of the delay, but only a small percentage of it. The process might still be salvaged, but it appears that a record number of Americans are not taking part in the count. Why?
Three possible causes - passive, active and ignorant - suggest themselves:
Passive: The census form looked like junk mail. The plain white color and the computer-printed label made it indistinguishable from a dozen other pieces of "occupant" material that most people find in their mailboxes every week. They either threw away the form, put it on the stack of things to look at sometime later. In the past decade - that is, since the most recent census, in 1980 - the flow of such unsolicited correspondence has risen steadily, and now it's easy for anyone to overlook a single item.
Active: People distrust the federal government. When Ronald Reagan promised to get the government off people's backs, he institutionalized fed-bashing as a kind of all-purpose paranoia. More recently, a few misguided political activists played loud variations on the same theme when they called for non-compliance with the census-takers at certain homeless shelters.
Ignorant: People don't understand what the census means, and so pay no attention to it. Perhaps the Census Bureau did not do enough to publicize its mission. Most of its television ads were aimed at minority groups that had been underrepresented in previous counts. A campaign with a wider focus might have been more effective.
Whatever the reason, the poor return of census forms cuts across social and economic lines. Only 34 percent of the forms were returned in Brooklyn, but the response Boston's posh Beacon Hill - 41 percent - wasn't much better.
In comparison, Roanoke's 66 percent return rate looks good. But by the same time in 1980, 82 percent of the forms in the Roanoke district had been returned. Census enumerators, who later this month will start going door-to-door to complete the count, are going to be busy. Nationwide, the unexpectedly heavy work will cost the taxpayers an unexpected tens of millions of dollars. An accurate census is important. It is not a mindless exercise in bureaucratic self-justification. It is not a useless statistic. It is not another example of "Big Brother" intruding on the individual.
The census has been taken every 10 years since the beginning of the republic. It is specifically mandated in the Constitution so there'll be an accurate, periodically updated basis for apportioning to each state its proper number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Moreover, census-based apportionment is not limited to determining the number of U. S. House seats each state will have. Under the "one man-one vote" rule, which the courts have said must be followed to comply with the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment, the census is the basis by which equal-population congressional districts are drawn within each state - as well as the districts for state legislatures and for local bodies, such as the boards of supervisors in Virginia counties, that aren't elected by an at-large system.
The census affects the lives of every American in other ways, too. It's a statistical portrait of the nation that determines the distribution of some federal monies. The census also provides perspective. It shows the nation and the states what they look like, and how they have changed.
Census figures can play a part in deciding a number of everyday issues. In New Jersey, towns need local population figures to know how many liquor licenses can be issued. In other areas, the number of sheriff's deputies that will be authorized to a county may be based on the census.
If the slow return rate holds and enumerators have to visit an extra 950,000 households to get an accurate count, so be it. It won't be Congress' or the Census Bureau's money that will fund the extra work; it'll be the taxpayers' money. But it's not too early for Congress and the Census Burea to start thinking about how the nation can most effectively get an accurate count in the year 2000.
by CNB