Census Board Democrats Argue for Those Left Out

The census failed to count 529,782 Californians last year, an estimated 1.5% of the state’s population, Democratic members of the Census Monitoring Board said Wednesday.

The proportion of the people overlooked in the census is higher in states with large minority populations, according to the report by Democrats.

The government is using the original census tally as the official figure for the number of people living in the country last April 1--281,421,906, to be exact. Democrats contend that a sampling technique used in a second survey conducted after the census would provide a way to get a better count of the millions missed in the original count. Latinos, African Americans and other minority groups are more likely to be missed.

To bolster their argument, Democrats on the monitoring board issued a special report estimating the undercount--the number of people missed in each state. The Census Bureau previously announced a national undercount figure: 3.3 million people, or 1.6.% of the U.S. population.

California had the largest estimated undercount. Democrats said other states with large undercounts are Texas (482,738), New York (271,500), Florida (258,929), Georgia (140,613), Virginia (126,262), North Carolina (124,538), Illinois (113,831) and Maryland (100,856).

Commerce Secretary Don Evans, appearing before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday, defended the 2000 census as the “most accurate in the country’s history.”

The argument over the undercount has become a strongly partisan issue. A group of 107 Democratic members of the House sent a letter to Evans this week, appealing for the release of the adjusted data.

“We need the most accurate count, with 34 million people we get the worst of it,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a Commerce Committee member, said at Wednesday’s hearing. In California, many communities “will not receive the funds they so desperately need” if the numbers are not adjusted, she said.

Census figures are used as the basis for sending federal dollars to states, cities and counties. The figures are vital for political power because they are used to redraw district boundaries for thousands of elected officials, including House members, and members of state legislatures and city councils.

Democrats want adjusted figures used because they expect that the numbers would show a large undercount of members of minority groups considered more likely to vote for Democratic candidates. Republicans, including President Bush and congressional leaders, oppose any adjustment, believing that the regular census gives the best political prospects for their party.

Rep. Dan Miller (R-Fla.), chairman of the House census subcommittee, told committee members there are numerous potential errors involved in the adjusted data. Releasing those numbers for redistricting and funding purposes “would be highly irresponsible,” he said. “Good intentions do not justify bad public policy, and a statistically adjusted census is bad policy on many different levels.”

The partisan dispute over adjustment has divided the census monitoring board, created to oversee the accuracy of the census. Democrats appointed by President Clinton favor adjustment. And they commissioned the report issued Wednesday.

“We know millions of people were missed, we know where they live and, for the most part, we know they are disproportionately minority,” said Gilbert F. Castellans, the Democratic co-chairman of the board. “With billions of dollars at stake, why can’t we fix the problem if we know we have the means to do so?”

Members appointed by the Republican leadership are equally convinced that the census was a very good one and that trying to adjust it could bring in dangerous errors.

“The undercount is a genuine American difficulty, to which we need genuine solutions,” said David Murray, a Republican appointee to the census monitoring board. The technique of using adjustments “cannot meet its primary obligation--being demonstrably more accurate” than the data gathered by the original census, he said.