It is currently the practice to include illegal aliens in the count for apportionment: https://www.census.gov/population/apportionment/about/faq.html#Q16. I think it is a reasonable argument to say they should be excluded. (It might have been smart if this was an agency decision for Trump to first rewrite the rules to exclude them and then order the census to collect legal status data on the argument that such people should not be included.) Since they are supposed to be included though, I think the Census Bureau has a responsibility to do their best to count them, which will require not doing things that intimidate them out of participating.
I agree. The constitution is wrong on this one. It should be citizens only that get counted, not all residents. Constitution is out-dated on this one and they never could have anticipated all the illegal aliens. So yeah, change it to fit modern times. I mean, they wrote that document when people were using muskets for guns for heaven's sake!
1. Are you suggesting we should give up trying? 2. A randomly distributed undercount would not impact distributions of power. When those undercounts run high in particular demographics, it will have the effect of shifting power from one demographic to another. So, a prejudicial (searching for the right word there) undercount is worse than a random one. 3. Among such prejudicial undercounts, some can result from uncontrollable factors. Homeless people are probably harder to count, or people who don't speak English, or whatever. We should (and I believe we do) put extra effort into finding and counting the hard-to-reach people. But there are also controllable drivers, like the government creating an atmosphere of fear among illegal immigrants that if they answer the survey they'll get deported. So, we should do what we can to compensate for the uncontrollable factors, but we should definitely control the controllable ones. This is one we see coming. If you believe what I think is very credible, that asking questions about legal status will deter people from mixed-status households from responding, then you have to not ask those questions because it will create not just an undercount, but a controllable prejudicial undercount. One that I cynically believe Wilbur Ross not only expects but intends.
You are assuming quite a bit. There is no evidence to indicate that past decennial census undercounts were “randomly” distributed. And we have a mechanism to make-up undercounted areas and we should use it: door-to-door census counters.
I didn't mean to imply that past undercounts were random. I was proposing a framework to think of the problem -- a spectrum that runs from the benign (randomized undercounts) to the malicious (intentional and antidemocratic power grabs). I'm sure the door-to-door guys will continue to try their best because they are dedicated public servants (aka Deep State) who want to do a good job, but they can only do so much to compensate for bad or malicious strategy.
So just to be clear, you think we should disregard the Constitution? Does that apply on to this issue, or anywhere we want?
Not surprising. In a Jan. 19 internal memo prepared for Ross, the Census Bureau's chief scientist, John Abowd, wrote that adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census "is very costly, harms the quality of the census count, and would use substantially less accurate citizenship status data than are available" from existing government records at other federal agencies.
His name's Wilbur and he looks like this: https://www.google.com/search?q=wil...R6wKHaDbAFEQ_AUIDygC&biw=1600&bih=773#imgrc=_ The jokes just write themselves
A second Federal Court rules against trump, ross, and the effort to add a citizenship question in the Census... Federal judge in California bars Trump administration from adding citizenship question to 2020 census https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/06/fed...om-adding-citizenship-question-to-census.html
SMH, No political reasons? lol, secretary ross seems to believe he has "executive privilege"... or is he pleading the Fifth?
Secretary Ross says "I testified truthfully to the best of my ability." Huh. I see now why the Donald gave him that job. I never would've come up with such a clever way to say "I lied about why I wanted that question in the census" in a million years... ....only the best people could do that...
