The United States conducts a census every 10 years, and 2020 is the year of the census. The reason why I am discussing the Census is the undercounting of certain groups within the United States, as well as something known as gerrymandering, an issue we will talk about later in this post.
The census has its origins in Rome. Roman officials were having a hard time collecting taxes, due to the immense size of the empire, and therefore decided to conduct an anthropological and geological survey of the land. The Censor, or a magistrate, was in charge of the census, along with regulating moral behavior and certain financial mechanisms. Unsurprisingly, we get our word for 'censor' from this.
The Constitutional basis for the census is the idea of apportionment, or allocating the number of Representatives in the House of Representatives. The Framers, in the Connecticut Compromise presented by Roger Sherman, created a bicameral, or two-housed, legislature. In one, the Senate, each state receives two legislators, while in the House of Representatives, each state receives a proportionate amount of representatives as there are people in the state (or more accurately, districts in the state).
The U.S. Census Bureau Online Archives sums it up pretty well:
"Apportionment" is the process of dividing the 435 memberships, or seats, in the House of Representatives among the 50 states. The Census Bureau conducts the census at 10-year intervals. At the conclusion of each census, the results are used to calculate the number of House memberships to which each state is entitled.
Using this information, each state is then divided into districts, with each district encompassing the same amount of people. After all districts are drawn, midterm elections are held, and that is the set of districts for the next 10 years.
As you can imagine, there are some issues that arise from this system:
- How can you make sure that it's accurate and that you have counted everyone?
- Aren't there multiple ways to draw district lines?
- Why does this matter?
Firstly, you cannot ensure 100% accuracy with the census by nature, but what is extremely alarming about the 2020 census is that the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, has projected that approximately 4 million Americans, namely ethnic minorities, will not be counted in this census. The reasons are simple:
The attention that President Trump has given to the citizenship question has alarmed non-citizen communities, even though the Census Bureau has stated that the "apportionment calculation is based upon the total resident population (citizens and noncitizens) of the 50 states." The idea here is that adding "Is this person a citizen of the United States?" to the Census will raise fears among immigrant communities - generally ethnic minorities - that the information collected by the Census will be used by ICE or USCIS to deport or imprison them. Even if the Supreme Court rules against this question, it's had a chilling effect on Census participation.
According to an Newsweek article, the methodology itself is flawed, as the new survey system was primarily online and through existing administrative records and third-party data. This was deemed "insufficiently tested in a decennial census environment," because it underrepresented people without reliable Internet access, and substantial previous government records. Besides that, there are the more glaring issues with these new systems. The GAO (Government Accountability Office) called attention to questions of lack of testing and cybersecurity; in fact, the 2020 Decennial Census was added to its High Risk List.
Secondly comes the issue of drawing district lines in multiple ways. In a practice known as gerrymandering, state legislatures carve up districts in such a manner that certain people of an opponent political affiliation are either packed into one throwaway district, or scattered around such that they perpetually constitute a minority in every district. The implications of this are that a certain political party is the predetermined winner in every election. Landslide elections with margins of victory of near 70% are common, and people of the minority give into apathy as they realize their legislators will never fear losing an election in a disproportionately drawn district. Although there are a list of regulations regarding gerrymandering, it still remains a large threat to our democracy, eschewing legislative compromise for political ambition.
Lastly, this matters because it's hard to bring about change and engage in democracy when the opinions of people are being discounted in exchange for easy political wins. Elections are meant to be a system in which we are able to hold our officials accountable, but when the mechanism by which our officials are allotted and informed is skewed, so is the resultant policy from those institutions.
I worked with an organization called OCA earlier this year, and they had set up a Census Count Committee, or a group of volunteers who work with local government to increase awareness, information, and accuracy of the Census, within either their own ethnic or geographical communities. Here is a guide from the Census Bureau on how to start your own, and I highly encourage you to do so.
Thanks for reading.
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