Clinton Pitches Plan to Use Census Sampling

Commenting on a dispute that has become highly partisan, President Clinton on Tuesday argued for the use of statistical sampling techniques for the next U.S. census, promising that the method would avoid the 1990 undercounting of minorities and children.

“It’s not about politics. It’s about people,” Clinton declared to applause at a community center in a Latino neighborhood of Houston. “It’s about making sure that every American--literally and really--counts.”

Against a backdrop of one of the most undercounted cities in the nation, he added: “Nobody’s got an ax to grind.”

Actually, the once-a-decade exercise of counting America’s heads has turned into a fiercely partisan matter. The Democratic White House wants to introduce statistical projections into the year 2000 census and not depend solely on counting individuals one by one. Republicans generally have assailed the proposal as a violation of the Constitution, which calls for “actual enumeration,” and a ploy by Democrats to bolster their standing when districts are redrawn after the census.

“This just opens the door to tremendous political corruption,” said Grover Norquist, a conservative activist who is part of a coalition, Citizens for an Honest Count, that wants the census to stick to traditional methods of counting people.

The dispute is more than academic. The proposed move to statistical sampling, endorsed by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences, could boost the number of minorities found to live in urban areas, which have often been undercounted. And, since urban areas tend to be Democratic, Clinton’s party could benefit when new congressional district lines are drawn after the census, political analysts said.

Census Bureau officials said that in 1990 they overlooked 8.4 million Americans, disproportionately children and minorities, while double-counting 4.4 million others, including many who own two homes.

In California, where nearly 1 million people were not counted, officials estimated that a more accurate count could yield $1 billion more in federal funds during the next decade, since many federal programs are funded on the basis of the census. In Texas, where Clinton spoke Tuesday, the uncounted number in 1990 has been estimated at half a million.

“The number of people not counted in Los Angeles--in Los Angeles alone--was enough to fill a city as big as Tallahassee, the capital of Florida,” Clinton said. The Census Bureau’s 1996 estimate of Tallahassee’s population was 137,000.

Republicans argue that sampling violates 200 years of history. In February, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) brought a suit, which is scheduled for a hearing in U.S. District Court next week, in which he noted that “the Clinton administration now seeks to abandon that course.”

But speaking to community activists in a modest building that houses 17 agencies, Clinton recalled Tuesday that Thomas Jefferson, while president, once dispatched federal marshals on horseback to tote up the number of Americans. Techniques for counting have changed over the years, as has society, including the introduction of mailed census forms.

The most recent census, with a more mobile population and ever-greater numbers not returning census forms in the mail, “for the first time . . . was less accurate than the one before,” Clinton lamented.

In sampling, census officials gather information from a random selection of households and, using statistical methods, project larger conclusions about the makeup of society. The administration would continue to use traditional methods of head-counting but also would use mathematical projections.

Many statisticians support the idea of sampling. But in light of the controversy, Congress has ordered the Census Bureau to draft two plans, one the traditional way, one with sampling. The bureau also is conducting a few dress rehearsals for the 2000 census, including one in Sacramento to test statistical sampling.

But Norquist complained in an interview that the technique would create “virtual people” who are Democrats and far more likely to live in urban centers than the real-live voters who have expanded the population of GOP strongholds in the West and Sun Belt.

“They are not going to find people in Colorado and Arizona and Florida. They are going to make up people in New York City and Baltimore and Detroit,” he said.