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Comment by CincinnatiMan | Hacker News Reader

> This means [it eliminated] literally a third of the time allocated for the Census Bureau to knock on doors, to try to enumerate the hard-to-count individuals, which happen to be African Americans, Latinx populations, immigrants, people in heavily transitory situations, tribal lands, some Asians.

Random question but why would some races have more trouble than others responding to the census? Is it more to do with poverty than race? Or is there a cultural distrust of the census that aligns with race?

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There are many reasons. They discuss poverty in the article. I would agree with cultural distrust of government officials. And very importantly, everything around the citizenship question/issue.

> The notion of these counts ever being used for enforcement — basically targeting high population, low citizenship-count blocks for ICE raids or whatever — that would be really, really problematic.

Stepping back, think in general about a government that wants to target, arrest, and deport certain groups of people, that is also going door to door and trying to establish records of who everyone is and where they live. Because of the bad optics of this, the US census has traditionally been extremely independent from law enforcement. The government has recently been attacking this barrier e.g. with the citizenship question and other things discussed in the article. Historically speaking, you might argue marginalized groups in such scenarios would be foolish to trust the census.

think in general about a government that wants to target, arrest, and deport certain groups of people

Yes. They are deporting people who didn't come into the country legally. Its important to have an accurate count of citizens in the country since that's who votes. There is an upcoming Supreme Court case that will determine if non citizens should be counted for House representation.

You may not agree with it, but it is important to know. With that said, I don't think ending the census early is the right way to handle this issue at all, it's just slimy.

The constitution specifically says the census is a count of all "free Persons", not only citizens. Obviously SCOTUS will weigh in now, but I think it's important to realize the actual wording of what the census is.

14th amendment drops the "free"

While also striking the 3/5 compromise, so I don't think it changes the reading.

It uses the term "free Persons" but the context is "their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons".

So "all other Persons", i.e. slaves, were counted.

Well, the 3/5 compromise has been removed, but even still are you arguing that immigrants aren't people or aren't free, i.e. not slaves.

Prisoners aren't free, but they still use infrastructure and I'm pretty sure they are supposed to be counted in the census.

They are, because they are free in that they are not slaves. Prisoners still have a plethora of constitutional rights.

The amendment against slavery excludes prisoners: Sometimes, they are, indeed, slaves.

And yeah, they have rights. But they don't have the right to freedom as we know it nor do they have the right not to be slaves.

You act as though there is a single freedom, which is not the case by any means. The amendment carves out specific exemptions for prisoners for certain things, but that doesn't make them chattal slaves, nor does it remove the rest of their rights, e.g. cruel and unusual punishment, ability to have representation, or have their speech curtailed.

I'm not sure who would classify prisoners as free, though. Classifying prisoners as free is warping what most folks would consider free. You can have rights and not be free. POW's are supposed to have certain rights, too, but that's hardly free. You can have rights without being free. Not being chattal slaves doesn't make you free either, nor does it mean you aren't a temporary slave.

In general, folks would agree that if you are in a situation where you are forced to eat at certain times, possibly only use toilets or showers at certain times, can be used as labor with little to no pay, and can never roam freely at the behest of armed guards that can shoot you, you aren't free. The main exception to some of this is military, but for now, this is something folks choose and some countries' soldiers are more free than the ones in the states.

I'm not going to continue this discussion as you're unwilling to understand that we're discussing free vs non-free as in non-chattel-slave vs chattel-slave, a.k.a. the ownership of another human being. The state does not own prisoners. Prisoners continue to have a plethora of constitutionally protected rights. Prisoners are counted in the census.

Your interpretation would imply they intended non-citizen native Americans to be counted in the Census.

The original text and the 14th amendment both excluded untaxed indians from the apportionment for the house of representatives.

So, they could ask to be counted, but there is no mandate to count them.

The constitution never said to count the people who vote. If you wanted to know that, just count how many people vote.

The constitution also doesn't preclude counting who is able to vote. The constitution places limits on the government, but we can add things that act within those bounds. Asking about citizenship falls within those bounds.

Article 1 Clause 3 requires enumeration of all free persons.

Yes. Again, counting citizens does not also preclude counting free persons. We already gather data on peoples race and religion, proving that we can gather more data than just headcount, and citizenship information has already been gathered between 1950 and 2000.

Counting only citizens does preclude counting all free persons. (If you're speaking about counting all but considering citizenship a demographic, that's legal and used to be done iirc, but was dropped as it was feared it would disincentivize non-citizen being counted. The recent court case about the citizenship question was settled by the courts because of administrative procedure, not the legality of the question.)

Moreover, collecting demographics data is orthogonal and I'm not sure why you're bringing it up.

Dutch census recording religion enabled the Nazis to quickly round up the Jews living there a few years later during the occupation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

Data from the U.S. census of 1940 was used to round up Japanese Americans and put them into internment camps.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/03...

Because of the bad optics of this, the US census has traditionally been extremely independent from law enforcement. The government has recently been attacking this barrier e.g. with the citizenship question

Two points on history and tradition. The census was originally carried out by the US Marshals. That should indicate the importance and weight of the project. The citizenship question was part of the census until 2000 (1950 short form, 2000 long form).

If you are using the census to distribute voting power to states, and the distribution is based on count of citizens, not people, then it is a fair question to ask.

The census is used to fairly apportion infrastructure to areas where people actually live. That this is done by representation is an artifact of our political system, not the Constitutional mandate that requires he census. It's not a fair question, as you say.

You don't have to like it.

The distribution of voting power is based on population, not citizenship. Non-citizens need to be counted too.

Only citizens can vote.

It doesn't matter - when the document was written America had tons of non-citizens and those people were counted.

Slaves couldn't vote either, but in the famous compromise were counted as a portion of a person - the distribution of political power is why.

Citizens of a certain age, who meet certain residency and bureaucratic requirements and haven't lost the right due to criminal convictions.

Women only got the franchise 100 years ago, but had always been counted on the census.

And children still can't vote, and are also counted.

It’s not based on citizens, but on the number of free persons living there (and three fifths non free). This particular word choice is important s as the census and the house have always been based on who’s living in the state not based on citizens living there.

Poverty, mainly. The article mentions:

> If you’re hard to count, you’re hard to count. The people who are hardest to count, the ones we worry most about in terms of undercount, are the same folks whose families don’t have food at night or don’t have a job. They’re worried about getting tossed out because they can’t make the rent. Or they’re ill and don’t have health insurance. Those folks tend not to have participating in the census at the top of their minds because they have basic needs that have to be met — for themselves, their children and sometimes for their parents and grandparents.

Statistician (but not a Census statistician) here with a few answers:

Black people have a higher than average non-response rate, even controlling for income, possibly due to a cultural mistrust of government institutions (for good reason).

Recent immigrants may not be able to read the language the census was mailed to them in, and may also be hesitant to respond due to fears of deportation- the point of the census isn’t to hunt down illegals, and people here legally shouldn’t be deported anyway, but the current administration hasn’t done much to reassure people. These effects will apply in differing amounts to Latino and Asian communities.

Finally, the bulk of the census is conducted by mail, and it takes a while to complete. Families without a permanent home might not be counted because they are only temporarily living with another family when the census arrives at that house, or they might be moving between addresses so that they aren’t counted in the response by any household at those addresses. This also disproportionately affects poor people and minorities.

And at least for me, I only received instructions in the mail telling me to do the census online. Not all families have easy access to the internet, and some just can’t be bothered to take the time to respond. This again disproportionately affects poor people and minorities.

To try to counteract these problems, the Census hires people to walk on foot and get responses from low coverage areas. But if you cut down on that effort, you’re going to miss some. One of the results of this could be that the census shows fewer poor people in some cities which will affect government funding decisions. But the tough part for a statistician is showing how much time is needed to walk around and get the coverage that you desire (and how many people you hire to do it). You can make some relatively small changes to your assumptions and get different answers. But cutting the time by a third is a pretty dramatic cut, so without looking at the details, I’m guessing that the coverage has decreased. That’s generally a bad thing since a census is supposed to be a full count of the population and not a sample.

Edit: I’ll also tack on a more nefarious interpretation than just using the Census to cut federal aid money to some cities. The Census is also used to portion electoral college votes for presidential elections. Because of the communities that are affected by this undercoverage, states that normally vote Democrat are more likely to lose votes than states that normally vote Republican. So this could make it easier for a Republican president to be elected in the next couple elections (the votes for the current election will not change however).

> And at least for me, I only received instructions in the mail telling me to do the census online

FWIW, I believe the Census Bureau sent either an online form or a paper form, depending on the prevalence of internet access in your area. I think they would also follow up with a form in the mail if you didn't respond online.

"Families without a permanent home might not be counted because they are only temporarily living with another family when the census arrives at that house, or they might be moving between addresses so that they aren’t counted in the response by any household at those addresses."

Apartment living is also a big factor for postal balloting. Security of mail boxes, inconsistent updates for forwarding addresses, etc.

I'm not sure it's true that

> states that normally vote Democrat are more likely to lose votes than states that normally vote Republican

because it could be true (1) that individuals who vote Democrat are more likely to go uncounted but (2) that states that vote Democrat are not more likely to be undercounted.

A few (totally imaginary) mechanisms that would do this: 1. Suppose Democrats who are surrounded by Republicans tend not to respond to the census, but everyone else does. Then you'll undercount Democrats, but mostly in places full of Republicans. 2. Suppose rural Democrats tend not to respond to the census, but everyone else does. Then again you'll undercount Democrats, but mostly in more-rural states, which tend to lean Republican. 3. Suppose poorer people (however they vote) tend not to respond to the census, but everyone else does. All else equal, richer people are more likely to vote Republican, but richer states are more Democratic. (I think Andrew Gelman's "Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State" talks about this.) Then Democrats will be undercounted more, but Republican states may be undercounted more.

I don't know whether mechanisms with this sort of counterintuitive property are actually responsible for enough of the census-counting difficulties to produce that paradoxical outcome, but it doesn't seem obviously impossible.

(Of course, if what we're considering is the nefariousness of possible motivations, then what matters isn't whether such mechanisms actually do do that, but whether the potentially-nefarious people in question expect them to. That's a different question and my guess is that they probably don't even if they should.)

Q: Do you have any sense for how many people might have been counted had the census efforts continued to Oct. 31?

> It’s not going to be much. If you’re hard to count, you’re hard to count. The people who are hardest to count, the ones we worry most about in terms of undercount, are the same folks whose families don’t have food at night or don’t have a job. They’re worried about getting tossed out because they can’t make the rent. Or they’re ill and don’t have health insurance. Those folks tend not to have participating in the census at the top of their minds because they have basic needs that have to be met — for themselves, their children and sometimes for their parents and grandparents.

> Because of those things that those people have to deal with, you actually could have extended the time for another month on top of that and you’d only get marginal gains. The census was already in a tough position. It would definitely help to get as much time as possible, because as people become acquainted with how to deal with Covid, they can do the grassroots effort that’s needed to get people to participate. But it’s going to be a marginal increase. At the end of the day, the die has been cast for quite a while: There are going to be undercounts of communities of color. The only question is how large — and is it so large that action needs to be taken in the form of litigation or legislation.

I'd really like to know how large the undercount is estimated to be. Is it 1%? 0.1%? 0.01%?

Because that changes how I think of this. If you've undercounted LA county population by 1,000 that's a completely different beast than 100,000.

Poor people move around vastly more frequently and often end up temporarily sharing living spaces.

Sounds like it's not discrimination against race then, but of economic status. The disenfranchisement of poor people.

It's not mutually exclusive. Discrimination against a race does increase poverty. And poverty increases discrimination against a race.

Poor white people aren't likely to have an undocumented person living in their household though. People in that situation are much less likely to talk to government employees or to fill out census forms in the first place.

So yes it's is undercounting poor people, but also disproportionately immigrants and relatives of immigrants.

Poor white people aren't likely to have an undocumented - person of color - living in their household.

I've known a number of local households that had undocumented Canadians, Brits and Germans.

It's been my experience that Americans who are hyper-concerned with illegal immigration, aren't grinding their teeth over these nationalities.

There's definitely a double standard. But Canadians and Europeans make up less than 5% of the total number of undocumented immigrants in the US.

So I still stand by my point that poor white people aren't likely to have undocumented people living in their household at all. Regardless of race.

>I've known a number of local households that had undocumented Canadians, Brits and Germans.

Also how many of those households were poor? There isn't nearly as much incentive for a poor Canadian, Brit, or German to come here as an undocumented immigrant because they'd be giving up guaranteed health care and far more permissive social services.

Let's consider this conversely. Do you feel that the tone, tenor and actions (of immigration resistance) would be different, in any way, if Euro descendants made up 95% of immigrants?

It’s easy to discriminate if you allow proxy’s. Just find something that hurts them more than it hurts you and repeat.

Race is already being used as a proxy for political affiliation. Using a proxy for Race as a proxy for political affiliation is less efficient, but still effective.

I came across a census worker in Portland who was doggedly trying to track down a former tenant of the house I was staying at. Having knocked doors I appreciate the hustle and tenacity the people on the ground for the census have.

Among other things, safety for minorities. The census is supposed to be secret and never used for any sort of law enforcement, etc. But in our living memory that protection was abused. The US census was used to help round up Americans of Japanese descent and put them in concentration camps in the 40s.

It'd be nice to think that could never happen again. But then you had the Trump people literally trying to put a citizenship question on the census despite every expert saying it was a mistake. The intent was clearly to intimidate (we have this in writing). The question ended up being left off but the damage was already somewhat done.

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/17/us/report-says-census-bur... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/03...

American blacks were more hit by corona virus for example.

American black are incarcerated more often which affects whole community. Ex prisoners and their families have unique housing stability problems.

Their family structure is different - more single women with or without children as males are not available. Also, more tight communities. Less of nuclear family more of extended family.

White people live more segregated per socioeconomic class, black mix more. Blacks and white are segregated anyway, so whatever you do you are not reaching both.

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