The growing racial gap in U.S. census results is raising an expert panel's concerns

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: NPR

Updated October 3, 202311:39 AM ET


The widening racial and ethnic gaps in how accurately different populations are counted in the U.S. census threatens the equitable distribution of political representation and federal funding, warns a new report by an expert panel who reviewed the 2020 national head count.

Most notably, the estimated net undercount rate at which Latinos were left out of the 2020 census was more than three times the rate in the previous once-a-decade tally. For people who identified as white and not Latino, the net overcount rate — fueled by counting a person more than once at different addresses — almost doubled from 2010 to 2020.

"There's always going to be error in a census," says Teresa Sullivan, a sociology professor and former president of the University of Virginia, who chaired the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine panel that was commissioned by the Census Bureau.

Still, the panel's report, released Tuesday, urged the bureau to take steps to learn from the shortfalls of the 2020 census and improve on the next constitutionally required count. Those statistics are set to be used to determine each state's share of congressional seats and Electoral College votes, as well as redraw voting districts for every level of government and guide more than $2.8 trillion a year in federal money for public services across the country.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2023/10/03/1202678747/2020-census-national-academies-panel

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Link to report - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27150/assessing-the-2020-census-final-report

[Captain Zero]

1. Trump ran the census and he was hostile to it

I knew when it was being done that the undercounts would be significant.

[peppertree]

4. +1

Third world despots often use censuses to undercount populations that tend to oppose them - as well as to understate glaring social problems.

They also, likewise, sometimes overcount those who tend to be on their side.

Just one of many such boxes Cheeto checked while in office - and has continued to check.

[onetexan]

5. Yup, results of this sensus need to be thrown out. It's rigged.

[Demovictory9]

6. Exactly

[Jim__]

2. Trump officials interfered with the 2020 census beyond cutting it short, email shows - Jan 2022

From NPR - Jan 2022 - linked from article cited in OP.

Former President Donald Trump's administration alarmed career civil servants at the Census Bureau by not only ending the 2020 national head count early, but also pressuring them to alter plans for protecting people's privacy and producing accurate data, a newly released email shows.

Trump's political appointees at the Commerce Department, which oversees the bureau, demonstrated an "unusually" high level of "engagement in technical matters, which is unprecedented relative to the previous censuses," according to a September 2020 email that Ron Jarmin — the bureau's deputy director — sent to two other top civil servants.

At the time, the administration was faced with the reality that if Trump lost the November election he could also lose a chance to change the census numbers used to redistribute political representation. The window of opportunity was closing for his administration to attempt to radically reshape the futures of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Electoral College.

Despite the 14th Amendment's requirement to include the "whole number of persons in each state," Trump wanted to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the census counts used to reallocate each state's share of congressional seats and electoral votes.

...

[IronLionZion]

3. MAGA likes to deliberately overcount whites

they are terrified of becoming a minority. Why? Are minorities treated badly or something?

The only thing that bothers racists more than telling them how many nonwhites are born and raised US citizens, is telling them the overwhelming majority of white people in the world will never be US citizens.