Or, a legislature redrawing voting districts could much more quickly create potential new boundaries and estimate likely voting patterns.
”There will be a lot more computations factored into the (redistricting) process,” says Brace of Election Data Services. ”Anybody that thinks they can do it on the back of an envelope is going to be rudely awakened when they start looking at the data.”
Plus, the more widespread availability of more detailed information will further democratize redistricting. A question that legislative leaders must now take into consideration, Brace says, is ”how are they going to keep control of the process? Does that now mean that everybody and their mother`s uncle can walk in with colored maps and floppy disks” to challenge the redrawing?
”There were three states that did not go to court (after) 1980 for some level of redistricting. I would be surprised if there are that many this time.”
”The people that are doing gerrymandering can`t get away with it anymore,” says Donald Cooke, president of Geographic Data Technology, a New Hampshire firm that will make extensive use of TIGER on behalf of its clients. ”In 1980 Connecticut and New York went to the expense and trouble of digitizing the census data just for the redistricting, and now (digitized data) is going to be given to anybody.”
Another key use of the map, says Cooke, will be for improving the logistics of delivery firms-where to send which trucks when. When, for example, you order a home-delivered pizza, he says, ”you think you`re buying cheese and pastry and tomatoes, but you`re also getting latitudes and longitudes and all this digital map stuff with it.”
”It`s a revolution in technology, and yet a lot of people aren`t going to be very aware of it as it kind of creeps up on them. I`m just looking for, boy, if I could save Federal Express 5 percent, I`d love it. I`d be a hero in Memphis.”
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This being the bicentennial census-the 200th anniversary of the first one, the 21st in history-it seems appropriate to look back.
Although head counts had been taken before independence by almost every colony and by some territories, the national census was born with the country. Almost immediately after the Revolution`s success, it was necessary to tally the populace, and quickly.
The count would determine each state`s share of the war debt as well as the number of seats it would get in the House of Representatives-a bad cop, good cop equation that the founding fathers figured would produce an accurate count.
The founders considered the census so important that they wrote it into Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, specifying that the ”whole number of persons in each State” be recorded: ”The actual Enumeration shall be made within three years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years. . .”
The inaugural census, a crude operation under the supervision of U.S. marshals, counted 3.9 million residents, 1.56 percent of the expected 1990 populaton.
Over the years, the census became more complex and unwieldy, until, by 1880 and 1890, it was taking almost 10 years to publish all the results. Congress trimmed the questions and, in 1902, for the first time, it established the census bureau as a permanent entity. By 1913, it had come under the Department of Commerce.
Improvements in data processing during the 20th Century made it possible once again to broaden the scope of the questionnaire, and the census began to include questions on housing, income, means of getting to work.
In addition to its primary purpose of determining political representation, the census has been used increasingly to determine allotment of federal and state funds to cities. Fast-growing towns sometimes can`t afford to wait 10 years: To increase their share of the state motor-fuel tax revenues, at least 80 out of the 261 municipalities in the Chicago 6-county area paid for special censuses during this decade, some more than once, according to Max Dieber, the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission`s research services director.
Although the stereotype is of a census worker going door-to-door, asking questions from the front stoop, the census today travels by mail. In 1980, according to the bureau, 95 percent of households received their
questionnaires by mail and were asked to return them the same way.
There are two types of questionnaires, and their design is such that they are likely to bring back bad memories of standardized tests, although the questions are much easier. Small black circles sit next to the multiple choice answers, just waiting to be filled in with an eager citizen`s pencil.
The more basic questionnaire goes to every household and asks for personal information about each person living there as well as some basic housing data. The detailed sample questionnaire is sent to every other household in rural areas and one in six in cities and suburbs. It asks more detailed housing, personal and employment data.
Only when the bureau does not receive the questionnaires back do census workers actually visit the house. Officials expect a 70 percent return rate in 1990. Although it is against the law not to return the census questionnaire, the penalties are slight and the census bureau says it only attempts to prosecute people who publicly advocate large-scale refusal to cooperate.
The key in all of this, bureau officials say, is that the data is, by law, confidential. Not until 72 years after the survey can names and addresses of respondents be released. Participants in the census, they stress, have nothing to lose and everything-meaning political power and government money-to gain.
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Still, people refuse to fill out the forms, either out of ignorance or fear (that information, for example, on who is in the household may be used to curtail welfare benefits or prosecute undocumented aliens) or for the cheap thrill of messing with Uncle Sam.
”I really think the census is probably the most crucial issue facing the Hispanic community over the next several years,” says Ruben Castillo, director of the Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund`s Chicago office.
The Pittsburgh lawsuit, filed by conservative U.S. representatives, wants to bar the bureau from counting undocumented aliens, contending that they do not have a right to representation in Congress. The bureau has counted them in the past and intends to do so again in 1990.
Castillo and others helping to defend the bureau argue that the ”whole number of persons” specified in the Constitution includes undocumented residents.
A census bureau study of its efforts in 16 major cities estimated that it undercounted blacks by 9.1 percent and Hispanics by 7.9 percent, according to Bridget Arimond, a City of Chicago deputy corporation counsel specializing in affirmative action issues. In Chicago, she says, the estimate for 1980 was of an overall 4.4 percent, or 132,000-person, undercount.
Since a ”perfectly sized” Chicago ward is 60,101 people, she says, this means that more than two wards worth of people were not counted. The 4.4 percent estimate also represents more than a full seat in the Illinois House, more than half a seat in the state Senate and a quarter of a seat in the U.S. House.
It also means that the city, according to one estimate, has been losing out on $11 million in state and federal money a year. It is for these reasons that Chicago and cities in a similar bind are suing the census bureau in New York, trying to force it to adjust its final numbers to include the undercount.
”It`s not as simple as a greeting card picture of the American dream,”
says Arimond. ”Not only is Chicago shortchanged, but every other large urban area with a large minority population is also being shortchanged.”
There is considerable debate, however, among statisticians over whether it is possible to come up with an accurate estimate of the undercount, and some question as to whether simply adding a number of people only thought to exist would throw the entire census in doubt.
”The census is remarkable for its self-examination, its introspection, on the whole, its accuracy,” says Prof. Kruskal. ”This whole undercount issue, it wouldn`t have come up if the census hadn`t started studying their own methods. In a sense, they`re hoist on their own petards.”
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The biggest problem facing the bureau, officials and outside critics acknowledge, is finding enough part-time workers, a much easier task earlier in the century when fewer women held jobs. In some high-employment areas the bureau has raised its wage from $5.50 an hour to $8.
”They`re competing with McDonald`s is what it comes down to,” says TerriAnn Lowenthal, staff director for the U.S. House subcommittee on census and population. It`s a choice between knocking on people`s doors and saying,
” `Excuse me, have you ever had a stillbirth in your life?` Or saying,
`Would you rather have a Big Mac?` ”
Other bureau trouble spots include the increasing mobility of society, the new influx of immigrants and the growing homeless population. On March 20 of next year, for the first time, the bureau will attempt to conduct the most accurate count yet of homeless people by going to where they live and, in some cases, using workers recruited from their ranks.
”When you think about the difficulties that they face, they achieve considerable success,” says Kirk Wolter, a former chief of the bureau`s statistical research division who left, in part, because of internal controversy over the undercount and a feeling that the bureau has become increasingly politicized.
”There are a few problems that remain, and the central cities offer examples of those problems. But there are rural areas that are undercounted, too,” says Wolter. ”The census is less than perfect in those few places.”
Still, he adds, ”It`s gotten better every decade in spite of the declining environment in which it works.”
Sometime after April 1 of next year, the questionnaires will start arriving in mailboxes nationwide. They will ask, in essence, Where were you on April 1, and what was your life like? The responses will start pouring in, and they will begin to be tabulated. The process will not be complete until 1991. Later that year, as it does every 10, the Population Association of America, the nation`s primary organization of demographers, will hold its annual meeting in Washington, within sniffing distance of fresh census data.
But it`s not just professionals and politicians who`ll be watching. At the bureau`s research center in Chicago, the researchers have a favorite story: This past fall, a man called wanting to know statistics on the city`s total population and the percentage of various ethnic groups within it. Invariably, the man explained, the topic came up for heated discussion at the family`s Thanksgiving table. He told the researchers that he ”wanted to be the loudest one there this year.”
