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September 20, 2009 No. 75
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CENSUS STAKEHOLDERS FOCUS ON
COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGIES FOR 2010
PLUS: Legislation would require census question on citizenship;
Census Bureau ends ACORN 2010 census partnership;
Revised publication schedule for 2008 ACS data;
House panel to review 2010 census communications plan;
New report highlights importance of census for immigrant communities;
and more.
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FOCUS ON PROMOTING THE 2010 CENSUS
Latino organizations hold "summit" on Communications Campaign: More
than 40 national Latino organizations, U.S. Census Bureau officials,
and media companies working on the targeted Latino communications
campaign met last week to discuss efforts to promote census
participation among Latinos and ways to coordinate messages about the
importance of the decennial count. According to a summary of the
meeting prepared by the Latino Census Network, attendees talked about
fear of government and concerns about data confidentiality; calls for
undocumented residents to boycott the 2010 census until Congress enacts
comprehensive immigration reform; the importance of engaging
faith-based institutions in census outreach activities; the
implications of anti-immigrant sentiments; and other challenges to
achieving an accurate count of Latinos.
The National
Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), a member
of the 2010 Census Advisory Committee, and Latino Census Network
Chairman Angelo Falcon, who serves on the Census Bureau's Advisory
Committee on the Hispanic Population, spearheaded the meeting of the
Latino Census Communications Group. The September 17 gathering
was held at the National Council of La Raza offices in Washington,
DC. To sign up for updates from the Latino Census Network, visit
the National Institute for Latino Policy web site at www.latinopolicy.org.
All
of the Census Bureau's official advisory committees, which are
scheduled to hold their regular fall meetings in the coming weeks, will
meet jointly on December 9, 2009, to provide final feedback to the
agency on the 2010 Census Integrated Communication Campaign.
Expert Census Bureau panel applauds paid media campaign development: An
independent panel of marketing and communications experts commended the
Census Bureau for using industry and academic "best practices" to
create the paid media campaign for the 2010 census. The agency
formed the five-member Academic Assessment Panel last spring to
"evaluate the methods used to define and develop the communications
campaign," according to a Census Bureau press release.
Panel
Chairman Dr. Jerome D. Williams, the F.J. Heyne Centennial Professor in
Communication, University of Texas, Austin, said in a written statement
that "the Census Bureau and [Communications Campaign contractor]
DraftFCB team have done an exceptional job and are to be applauded for
what has been developed so far under very challenging
conditions." He called the crafting of the 2010 Integrated
Communications Campaign "fundamentally sound."
2010 Census
Publicity Office Chief Raul Cisneros said the expert review during the
development phase of the media campaign allowed the Census Bureau to
incorporate the panel's recommendations for improvements and revisions
before it finalized advertising plans.
Modified ACS materials seek to minimize confusion in 2010: The
Census Bureau will revise current materials or add new ones in
conducting the American Community Survey (ACS) next year, to help
reduce anticipated confusion among households that receive both the ACS
questionnaire and 2010 census form. The ACS samples about 250,000
addresses a month, or 3 million a year, collecting a wide range of
demographic, social, housing, and economic data previously gathered on
the census long form once every ten years. The ACS was first
implemented nationwide in 2005.
ACS materials sent to homes in
the sample, including a pre-notice letter and at least one
questionnaire (unresponsive homes receive a replacement form), will
advise recipients that they will be receiving both ACS and decennial
census questionnaires in 2010, and that they are required by law to
complete both. The agency also will modify packaging for ACS
materials next year, using different colors and logos on the envelopes
to distinguish them from the 2010 census mail packages.
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NEWS FROM CAPITOL HILL
Senate bill would add
citizenship question to decennial census:
Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT)
introduced legislation that would require the Census Bureau to collect
information on citizenship and legal status in the decennial census, in order
to remove undocumented residents from the state population totals used for
congressional apportionment. The
"Fairness in Representation Act" (S. 1688) calls for a "checkbox or other
similar option" on the census questionnaire, to determine if respondents are
U.S. citizens or legal residents.
In a press statement, Sen.
Bennett said it "does not make any sense" for congressional apportionment and
representation in the Electoral College "to be determined by a process that
unfairly provides the advantage to those communities with high illegal
populations." The lawmaker praised
the Census Bureau's work but called the apportionment process "broken and
unfair."
The proposal, if enacted in
its current form, would be effective starting with the 2010
census. It takes several years for the Census
Bureau to research, develop, and test its forms for a decennial census,
and
almost a full year to print and address questionnaires. For the
last several decades, the census has included a short form sent to all
housing units, and a long form sent to a sample of homes; only the long
form included a question on citizenship. The American Community
Survey, which is replacing the traditional long form in 2010, asks
respondents if they are U.S. citizens.
Article I, section 2, of the
U.S Constitution requires a population census every ten years as the
basis for
allocating seats in the House of Representatives. As modified by
the Fourteenth
Amendment (section 2), the apportionment is based on "the whole number
of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed." Congress
debated whether "citizens" or "voters" should be the basis for
apportionment when it passed the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866,
according to a Congressional Research Service review of similar
legislative debates on the eve of the 1990 enumeration (LOC/CRS Report
No. 88-62A, January 13, 1988). Since then, lawmakers have
considered (but not enacted) a number of proposals to amend the
Constitution to exclude non-citizens or undocumented residents from the
census population counts used for apportionment.
Former
Rep. Thomas Ridge (R-PA), ranking member on the census oversight
subcommittee at the start of the 1990 census, led a group of
Representatives, states, and private organizations in a lawsuit seeking
to exclude undocumented residents from the apportionment counts (Ridge v. Verity, 715
F.Supp. 1308, W.D.Penn. 1989); a federal appeals court upheld the lower
court's dismissal of the case for lack of standing. More
recently, Rep. Candice Miller (R-MI) sponsored a resolution (H.J.Res.
11) to amend the Constitution to exclude non-citizens from the
apportionment counts derived from the census. The resolution,
which has 11 cosponsors, was referred to the Committee on the
Judiciary, which considers all proposed constitutional amendments.
The Bennett bill, referred to the
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, had three original
cosponsors: Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), and Sen. Michael
Enzi (R-WY).
House oversight panel to evaluate Communications Campaign: The
House Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives
(Committee on Oversight and Government Reform) will hold a hearing on
September 22, 2009, to examine the 2010 Census Integrated
Communications Campaign, including "criteria for implementation" and
"measurements for success." Census Bureau Director Robert Groves
also will provide an update on preparations for the upcoming decennial
count. The hearing will start at 2:00PM in Room 2154 Rayburn
House Office Building.
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2010 CENSUS "PARTNER" NEWS
Census Bureau ends ACORN's 2010 census partnership: Census
Director Robert Groves told the Association of Community Organizations
for Reform Now (ACORN) that the agency was terminating its Partnership
Agreement with the nonprofit organization, citing criteria for
determining whether a group can serve effectively as a booster for the
2010 count. The director said in a September 11 letter that
"ACORN's affiliation with 2010 Census promotion has caused sufficient
concern in the general public, has indeed become a distraction from our
mission, and may even become a discouragement to public cooperation,
negatively impacting 2010 census efforts."
Dr.
Groves said the Census Bureau did not "come to this decision lightly,"
citing the agency's initial hope that ACORN could help encourage census
participation among hard-to-count populations, such as the poor,
renters, and people whose primary language is not English.
ACORN's
participation in the Partnership Program drew significant criticism
from Republicans in Congress. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Sen.
David Vitter (R-LA) delayed a vote on Dr. Groves' nomination to be
Census Director based, in part, on their concerns about ACORN's role as
a 2010 census partner. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), ranking
member on the House census oversight subcommittee, urged the Census
Bureau to end the agreement last spring. In a statement calling
the director's recent action "welcome news," Rep. McHenry praised Dr.
Groves' "courage" for terminating its relationship with ACORN and said
he was "sure there are those in the Obama Administration who will not
be happy" with the decision.
Rep.
Darrell Issa (R-CA), the senior Republican on the Oversight and
Government Reform Committee (of which the census subcommittee is a
part), said, "ACORN's partisan election efforts and its involvement in
criminal conduct rightly disqualify it from working on the non-partisan
mission of the Census to accurately and honestly count the U.S.
population." The congressman said that congressional
redistricting and the allocation of federal funds would have been
affected "[h]ad ACORN been allowed to submit fraudulent information to
the Census." A description of the Partnership Program on the
Census Bureau's web site says that partner organizations "are not
Census employees and have no responsibility for counting, collecting or
processing census data."
Community-based
organizations, schools, businesses, state and local governments, and
other groups may sign a "partnership agreement" with the Census Bureau,
promising to be "advocates for census
cooperation and participation," according to guidelines for the
Partnership Program. A description of the selection process says
that partners should be "visible and trusted voices in the communities
they serve." Partner
organizations are asked to consider a wide range of activities that
would promote cooperation with the census, including displaying and
distributing materials, volunteering at Census Bureau events, inviting
Census Bureau staff to speak at conferences and meetings, helping to
translate census materials, providing space to test job applicants, and
serving as a Questionnaire Assistance Center or Be Counted site.
Partnership
Program staff may decline to select organizations as 2010 census
partners, according to the guidelines, if applicants "are not trusted
or are viewed negatively within the community" or "could distract from
the Census Bureau's mission," among other reasons.
More than 80,000 national and local organizations have signed
partnership agreements in support of the 2010 census; there were about
140,000 partners during the 2000 census.
Asian American advocacy group launches census campaign: The
Asian American Justice Center (AAJC), a member of the 2010 Census
Advisory Committee, has launched a national campaign to mobilize the
Asian American community in support of the 2010 census. The
effort, which includes partnerships with eight local organizations in
areas with significant Asian American populations, will rely on media
outreach, community education, and social networking to highlight the
importance of census participation. AAJC will translate many of
its census campaign materials, such as fact sheets and toolkits, into
15 languages.
To access AAJC's census campaign materials, visit www.asianamericancensus.org.
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CODING MISTAKE DELAYS RELEASE OF SOME ACS
ECONOMIC TABLES BY ONE WEEK
The Census Bureau will release 2008 American Community
Survey (ACS) one-year estimates on poverty, family income, and food stamp
recipients a week later than planned after discovering a coding error that
affected tabulation of the data.
The agency said the mistake affected approximately ten percent of the
data tables, which it will now publish on September 29. All other data for the roughly 7,000
jurisdictions with a population of 65,000 or greater will be available
on September 22, as originally planned.
Three-year ACS estimates, for areas with a population of 20,000 or
greater, will be released on October 27.
The
coding mistake involved new check-box options for children and in-laws
in the 2008 ACS relationship question; the tabulation of data on family
income (which in turn affects poverty and food stamp receipt
calculations) failed to account for income from these sources.
Members of the press were notified of the problem late last week, when
the Census Bureau was scheduled to release the full set of one-year
data to the media on an embargoed basis. For more information on
the annual ACS data release, see the September 6, 2009 Census News Brief (#73).
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THE REST OF THE NEWS ...
Report highlights importance of count of undocumented residents: The
Drum Major Institute for Public Policy has issued a report analyzing
the benefits of counting undocumented residents accurately in the
decennial census. The self-described "progressive" Institute
concludes in "The Next Economic Imperative: Undocumented Immigrants and
the 2010 Census" that, "Failing to gather accurate
information about an estimated 12 million undocumented residents will
make it
too difficult for the country to recover from the worst recession in
decades:
local and state governments won't receive adequate funding for public
services;
businesses will be discouraged from investing in new markets and
creating jobs
in growing communities; costly mistakes will be made in infrastructure,
education, and health care because of incomplete demographic data."
The
nonprofit think tank also has drafted talking points to help immigrant
advocates and other groups discuss the importance of counting
immigrants. For a copy of the report and the talking points,
visit the organization's web site at http://www.drummajorinstitute.org/library/report.php?ID=98.
Census Project blog tackles key 2010 census policy and operational issues: The
Census Project launched a new weekly blog to follow final preparations
for and implementation of the 2010 decennial census. If you would
like to receive new posts each week via e-mail, click here http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=censusblog&loc=en_US to sign up, or click here http://twitter.com/censusproject to follow us on Twitter.
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Census News Briefs are prepared by Terri Ann Lowenthal,
an independent legislative and policy consultant specializing in the
census and federal statistics. All views expressed in the News Briefs
are solely those of the author. Please direct questions about the
information in this News Brief to Ms. Lowenthal at TerriAnn2K@aol.com.
Please feel free to circulate this document to other interested
individuals and organizations. Ms. Lowenthal is a consultant to the
nonpartisan Census Project, organized by the Communications Consortium
Media Center in Washington, DC. Previous Census News Briefs are posted
at www.thecensusproject.org.
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