[EL] defunding the American Community Survey

[Doug Hess]

The American Community Survey (ACS) is not the Census product that asks
about voting and registration (that is the Current Population Survey's
November Supplement). Rather it is the "long form" of the Census that is
now distributed each year to a fraction of households and, thus, allows for
frequent updating of important demographic data. I.e., instead of waiting
every ten years, researchers can get something like a rolling picture of
the nation for the more populous geographic units and multi-year averages
for smaller units. Congress recently voted to scrap the ACS. This would be
bad for research and planning in a vast number of fields, including
elections. You can read about this in the link below after the discussion
of Congress voting to scrap NSF funding for political science
research...which would also be bad for elections research.

Just FYI.

http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs021/1102766514430/archive/1109996513056.html#LETTER.BLOCK21

Douglas R. Hess, PhD
Washington, DC
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