Census Seeking to Leave No One Out in the Cold

Stanton Katchatag was first, and after him come 274 million other Americans.

“Including,” points out Henry Ivanoff, the mayor of this remote, ice-shrouded fishing village on the Bering Strait, “the president and vice president, including the governors of the union, including Michael Jordan.”

Americans’ decennial appointment with history, the 2000 Census, began Thursday morning--just after sunup, at 11 a.m.--with an 82-year-old Eskimo. Katchatag and his neighbors had to be grabbed early. By the official April 1 census day, most of them will be out at fishing camps dozens of miles up the Unalakleet River, hauling in spring chinook salmon and trout.

The arrival of 10 census team leaders, five regional managers and the U.S. Census Bureau director himself, Kenneth Prewitt, in a village 400 miles northwest of Anchorage is an indication of the extraordinary lengths to which the federal government is prepared to go to assure that the first population count of the new millennium tracks down every American. Even those like Katchatag, who take their morning coffee at the end of the Earth.

“It matters how well we count each other, because a census is intended to be, has to be, completely inclusive. It only works if it leaves no one out,” Prewitt said. “The 2000 Census is an opportunity to paint a picture of the country at one of the most dynamic moments in its history.”

Indeed, the bureau predicts that the nation’s population will more than double in the coming century, reaching 571 million in 2100. And sometime mid-century, for the first time, less than half of those in the United States will be non-Latino whites. The 2000 count, officials say, will track more foreign-born residents than at any time in more than 100 years.

The march into rural Alaska is part of a massive multicultural and multilingual outreach campaign that will help make this the costliest census ever--$6.8 billion. At its peak, the overall census work force will reach 860,000. Some of the budget will go to buying a 30-second promotional spot during the Super Bowl. A lot more will go to paying the census counters $18.75 an hour to canvass hard-to-reach spots such as Alaska.

Determined to Avoid Pitfalls of 1990 Count

Census officials are determined to avoid the pitfalls of the 1990 count, which missed 8.4 million people (an estimated 800,000 in California), counted 4.4 million others twice and, for the first time, was less accurate than its predecessor.

The results will be fleshed out with statistical sampling that census officials believe will provide the most accurate tally possible. But in response to nationwide political opposition to anything less than a house-to-house count, the bureau is pouring millions of dollars into advertising and billions more into staffing to track down the most recalcitrant of respondents in homes across America.

At stake is an estimated $180 billion a year in federal funds distributed on the basis of census populations, as well as boundaries of congressional and legislative districts that are apportioned with the aid of census data.

Nowhere are the stakes higher than in Alaska, whose 270 rural villages depend heavily on outside aid and where the state’s 104,750 Native Americans--who lost several state legislative seats when the 1990 census documented an explosive growth in Alaska’s urban centers--are seeking a complete count.

The Clinton administration has supported the use of statistical sampling to better reflect native, immigrant and minority communities, which it says have been undercounted in house-to-house tallies.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled that only a straight head count can be used for purposes of redrawing congressional districts. But it left open the question of whether those adjusted figures can be used by individual states to draw legislative districts. Alaska, along with Arizona, last year passed a law banning the use of those adjusted figures--sparking immediate opposition in native villages like Unalakleet.

The Alaska Federation of Natives and the Native American Rights Fund have urged the Justice Department to rule that disallowing sampling is discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act. “Many of our people are totally disenfranchised from the political process,” said Julie Kitka, president of the federation.

“Our Legislature is dominated by urban interests,” Kitka said, resulting in declining state funding for rural schools and state opposition to federal protections for native subsistence hunting and fishing.

A similar debate has played out in Washington, where Congress set aside the statistical sampling issue late last year in order to allow the actual count to move ahead. Because adjusting the tally to better reflect immigrants and minorities is likely to favor Democrats in any redistricting, Republicans have overwhelmingly opposed it.

Census officials have agreed to compile two sets of data--one statistically adjusted, one a straight head count--and leave it up to the states to decide which to use in drawing legislative boundaries.

In Alaska, Republican state Sen. Jerry Ward of Anchorage said the GOP majority simply was trying to protect the “one person, one vote” concept.

An estimated 65% of Alaska’s natives live in rural villages. And many who live in the cities are undercounted because they may not belong to stable households. Overall, the percentage of residents who should have been counted but weren’t was higher in Alaska than elsewhere. And just 52% of Alaskans mailed back their initial census questionnaires--by far the lowest in the nation. That was one reason officials targeted the state with an early sweep.

“Alaska has a higher-than-usual population of people who just simply don’t want to belong to the U.S., who simply resist the idea that the federal government has any control over them,” Prewitt said.

Resistance to federal census takers is a notion that has gained ascendancy in ultraconservative circles across the country.

“Real Americans don’t answer nosy census questions,” the Libertarian Party’s national director, Steve Dasbach, said last week. “You can strike a blow for privacy, equality and liberty by refusing to answer every question on the census form except the one required by the Constitution: How many people live in your home?”

Indeed, in the past some people have balked at answering questions about their race, how many cars they own and how many toilets they have at home. Answering all of the questions is a legal requirement, however, and Prewitt said the bureau would “consider whether to prosecute” those who refuse to answer all 51 questions.

In rural Alaska, it is more a question of logistics than politics. Census takers here will traverse an area, from the Aleutian Islands to the Canadian border, more than 500,000 square miles.

One of the keys to getting an accurate count is, quite simply, the ice that currently locks up the rivers and hugs the shoreline of the Bering Sea.

“It’s important to come do the remote areas first, because everything’s still frozen. At breakup, you’re chest-deep in mud and everybody’s out in the traditional hunting and fishing grounds, which could be anywhere,” said Mike Burns, deputy regional census manager for the Northwest.

Census officials tell residents of villages such as Unalakleet that each person not counted could cost the community thousands of dollars in state and federal funding.

Census Director Goes Ice Fishing

The 1990 census counted 714 people in Unalakleet. Updated figures put the current tally at 805. Rose Towarak, a nurse at the local clinic, thinks the figure may be even higher. “We have more than a thousand active charts,” she said.

The census team arrived here in the middle of a virtual heat wave of 38 degrees, after several weeks of weather in the minus 40s. A sled dog team ushered Prewitt off to an afternoon of ice fishing, followed by a community potluck in the school gymnasium.

Census team leaders spent most of the morning Thursday learning how to fill out the questionnaires. “Mark the sex of each household member while you’re asking question No. 1,” advised Fred Ryan, a trainer from Unalakleet. “If you cannot determine it, ask the household member.”