The Trump administration is pushing the Census Bureau to end its count a week from Wednesday, even though some states haven’t collected responses from more than 10 percent of addresses.
Times Opinion predicted how many people would remain uncounted on Sept. 30, based on each state’s current response rate. Our analysis shows that those undercounts will cheat some states — mostly Republican — out of federal funding and one state out of a congressional seat.
Share of uncounted addresses
37 states are
not on track
to collect responses
from 99% of addresses by Sept. 30
Share of uncounted addresses
37 states are
not on track
to collect responses from 99% of addresses by Sept. 30
9/30
end date
10% of addresses
uncounted
4% of Georgia addresses will
remain uncounted on Sept. 30,
according to our model
Share of uncounted addresses
9/30
end date
to collect responses
37 states are
not on track
from 99% of addresses by Sept. 30
10% of addresses
uncounted
4% of addresses will remain uncounted in Georgia on Sept. 30, according to our model
The Census Bureau’s goal is to collect responses from 99 percent of the households in its address list. Thirty-seven states won’t reach 99 percent completion by the end of September, according to our model, which is based on a study by researchers at the American Statistical Association.
If the end date were pushed back to Oct. 31, as census officials previously planned, we predict that every state would reach a completion rate of at least 99 percent.
The bureau recognized in April that the pandemic would hamper its ability to accurately count the nation’s more than 330 million residents.
As a result, census officials moved the deadline for finishing the majority of the count to Oct. 31 and asked Congress to push back to April 2021 from Dec. 31 the date by which they have to deliver the population totals that will determine how many House seats each state gets in Congress.
At the time, President Trump supported the bureau’s request, calling the pandemic an “act of God” and intimating that the bureau should ask for even more time to get the numbers right.
But in August, the bureau announced that it was cutting the count short by four weeks in order to meet the Dec. 31 House apportionment deadline. The about-face came not long after Mr. Trump issued an executive memorandum to exclude undocumented immigrants from the population totals.
“It’s not hard to connect the dots,” said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer and census expert. “Apparently President Trump realized that if he doesn’t win the election then he won’t be in office when the Census Bureau finishes the apportionment counts,” thereby forfeiting his chance to modify the numbers that he gives to Congress, said Ms. Lowenthal.
Though Mr. Trump’s directive was struck down in court this month, our model shows that if the count ends this month, the undercount in Florida will lead to a different congressional makeup: Ohio will gain another seat, while Florida will lose one. That would not be the case if the October deadline was reinstated.
In terms of funding, our analysis shows that 13 states would lose more than $5 million a year in federal Medicaid payments. Among them, Florida, Louisiana and Georgia would each be shortchanged more than $50 million a year.
Nine of the 10 states that will lose the most in Medicaid payments voted for Mr. Trump in the 2016 election. Undercounts in those states could also lead to a smaller share of the $1.5 trillion in federal funding for infrastructure, housing, hospitals and public safety that is allocated based on census results. If Republican senators continue to ignore the Census Bureau’s original request for a deadline extension, the ramifications could erode Republican support in battleground states like Florida and Arizona over the next 10 years.
13 states will lose more than $5 million a year in Medicaid funding
Under a Sept. 30 census end date, compared with federal funding levels if the census had until Oct. 31 to finish its count.
−$50 million per year
North Carolina
South Carolina
Mississippi
New Mexico
Of the 13 states, only New Mexico went to Hillary Clinton in 2016
−$50 million per year
North Carolina
South Carolina
Mississippi
New Mexico
Of the 13 states, only New Mexico went to Hillary Clinton in 2016
The census’ previously requested deadlines could be reinstated by Congress or in court. Early this month, a federal judge in California temporarily blocked the September end date.
The plaintiffs in the California case have argued that the rushed count would violate precedent established by the Supreme Court that the census must bear “a reasonable relationship to the accomplishment of an actual enumeration of the population.”
Central to their argument is whether the shortened timeline disproportionately harms historically undercounted communities.
People who live in counties with the lowest self-response rates are disproportionately Black, Hispanic and low-income. Four fewer weeks of door-to-door outreach from census takers raises the chance that those populations will be underrepresented in the final population tallies.
Residents of counties with high poverty rates are less likely to have returned their census questionnaires
Self-response rate
Higher poverty rate
Lower
response rates
Share of residents with incomes below the federal poverty threshold
50% of residents are below the poverty threshold
Higher poverty rate
Lower self-response rate
Self-response rate
Note: Bigger circles represent counties with large populations.·Source: New York Times analysis of data provided by Steven Romalewski.
“The people who are going to be hurt the most by an undercount are the people who are already struggling” because of the pandemic, said Tamika Turner, census communications director for the Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights.
Undercounting minorities would harm more than just the people who the census missed. If the census undercounts Hispanic children, for instance, schools might hire too few teachers, which could compromise the quality of education that every student at those schools receives.
The consequences of an inaccurate census could be long-lasting and difficult to identify until it’s too late. “The presumption is that the September deadline is going to benefit Republicans and hurt Democrats,” said Howard Fienberg, who co-directs the Census Project, a census integrity group. “But it could hurt everybody in one way or another.”
Now that courts have made it clear that Mr. Trump cannot exclude undocumented immigrants from the apportionment totals, Republicans in Congress have no clear reason to rush the final steps of the census’ count. The Trump administration’s Sept. 30 deadline is nothing more than an election season plot by a nervous president, desperate to assert his power — even if doing so would ultimately harm his supporters.
“I think that members of Congress who are jumping off this cliff with the president to cut the census short are risking a very inaccurate census everywhere for no gain,” said Ms. Lowenthal.
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