Clearing the Political Clouds Over the 2010 Census

Republican Sen. Judd Gregg called differences over next year's decennial census "only a slight catalyzing issue" in his decision to withdraw as nominee for secretary of commerce. But the political wrangling over the 2010 population count, which will determine the number of House seats per state, the redrawing of political districts within states and the allocation of billions of dollars in federal funds, has been anything but slight.

The big story for the 2010 census will be the big Latino count. Since the last census in 2000, Latinos have become the largest minority in the United States and account for half of U.S. population growth.

This is exciting news. But it excites people in different ways.

Latino organizations are worried that there will be a political interest in undercounting Hispanics. Not surprisingly, they were quick to react negatively to the nomination of Gregg, whom they accused of having "fought President Clinton's efforts to increase funding" to produce the most accurate 2000 census possible, as the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials put it.

The implication was that as head of the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, Gregg would undermine efforts to reach out to minorities and the poor -- populations that experts say are normally undercounted and tend to vote Democratic rather than Republican.

In an effort to calm the critics, the White House announced it would play a bigger role in supervising the population count. Republicans responded by accusing the Obama administration of attempting to undermine the census by politicizing it. They further suggested that Latino groups would pressure the Census Bureau to use questionable methods that would distort the count.

In the end, there was little factual basis for the brouhaha. No matter the level of interest in the results, there is not much politicians or interest groups can do to "force the Census Bureau to publish numbers that deviate from actual tabulations," according to Andrew Reamer, an economist at The Brookings Institution who called the recent debate "a tempest in a teapot."

For all the political heat, one might think that the 2000 census was a disaster. But it is largely seen as a big success over previous decennial counts, undercounting blacks by less than 2 percent and Hispanics by less than 1 percent.

Sure, there is nothing that guarantees that the 2010 count will be just as successful. There are concerns that the Census Bureau is unprepared for the 2010 census due to important technological glitches and other setbacks. This week, Robert Goldenkoff, the U.S. Government Accountability Office director of strategic issues said in an e-mail that "the bottom line is that with just a little more than a year remaining until census day, the Census Bureau's overall readiness for the 2010 enumeration is uncertain."

Central to that uncertainty is the lack of a Census Bureau director. The high undercount of 5 percent of blacks and Hispanics in 1990 has been attributed in part to the lack of a director in 1989.

Thankfully there is widespread support for naming Ken Prewitt, who was director during the 2000 census, and doing so even before there is a new secretary of commerce. The sooner he is named, the sooner some of the current fears over the way the 2010 census is carried out should die down.

But not all. While Hispanic growth since 2000 has been less a product of immigration than in the past, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, there are those who will remain unhappy with the fact that the big Latino count will include immigrants living here illegally.

It won't be the first time some will question the census' constitutional mandate to count all people regardless of their immigration status. But considering the sentiment around immigration in recent years and the fact that today Democrats stand to win with more Hispanics counted, the potential for nastier political wrangling is real.

Republicans have reason to worry, but the census is no place to solve the broken U.S. immigration system. Democrats counter that the practical thing to do is to start debating immigration reform now. As Simon Rosenberg, the president of the progressive think tank NDN recently wrote, politicians cannot wish the immigration problem away. "Inaction is not an option any longer."

Meanwhile, with Hispanic growth since 2000 occurring in almost 3,000 of the nation's 3,141 counties, Latino advocates are right to insist on an improved outreach effort. Concern with an undercount is that it leaves pockets of the population underserved by federal funds or by representation.

The hope is that the 2010 census will be even more accurate than the one 10 years ago, thus narrowing the possibility for subsequent disputes. As Reamer said, "an accurate count is an accurate count." And that is something both Republicans and Democrats, Latinos or non-Latinos, should be able to live with.