[EL] US Supreme Court risks public cooperation with 2020 census

Wed Apr 24 13:58:43 PDT 2019

The census bureau is not completely dependent on public cooperation.  The census bureau has access to what the post office knows, which is plenty.  The post office knows all the addresses where people receive mail.  The post office routinely makes digital copies the outside of each piece of postal mail.  Also the census has the data for drivers licenses, utility customers, property ownership, voter registration records, school records, etc.
Mostly the census has trouble with people who don't have fixed abodes, or who move very frequently, or who live in vehicles or off the grid, or who aren't listed on rental agreements even though they live with renters whose names are on those agreements.  Also the census may not know about pre-school age children.
So the politically upset, stable-residence people who might feel like refusing to cooperate with the census would not be skipped, generally.  There might be a subset of these people who would fill out the form but who would refuse on principled grounds to answer the citizenship question.  There might be a movement to have upset people send their census forms, or some fragment, to the US Supreme Court, if the decision comes out badly.
The Japanese internment of 1942 depended partly on census data from the 1940 census.
I have read that in France, the census does not ask the ethnicity of any respondents, because the French government wants to minimize ethnicity and encourage residents of France to not define themselves that way.
It does not follow logically that the US government needs to know about the religion of the respondents, or their politics, even though those variables are very significant for society.  Good census administration ought to do everything possible to let the census do its original job, to enable congress to reapportion US House seats accurately.  If the 2020 census is a dismal failure, there is always the precedent that congress did not reapportion following the 1920 census.  Congress did nothing and the reapportionment that followed the 1910 census was in effect for 20 years.  Better to do nothing than to use a failed census.

Richard Winger 415-922-9779 PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147 

    On Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 1:42:09 PM PDT, Fredric Woocher <fwoocher at strumwooch.com> wrote:  

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Yes, I am thinking of moving to Idaho or Montana just so that I can boycott the census from that state!

Fredric D. Woocher

Strumwasser & Woocher LLP

10940 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 2000

Los Angeles, CA 90024

fwoocher at strumwooch.com

(310) 576-1233

From: Law-election [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu]On Behalf Of Trevor Potter
Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2019 7:01 PM
To: Richard Winger
Cc: Election Law Listserv
Subject: Re: [EL] US Supreme Court risks public cooperation with 2020 census

And such a boycott will of course disadvantage their state as it will create in an undercount and the resulting potential for fewer representatives for that state in Congress.

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 23, 2019, at 8:29 PM, Richard Winger <richardwinger at yahoo.com<mailto:richardwinger at yahoo.com>> wrote:

It seems to me that if the US Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census form, that could trigger a big total boycott of the census by many people who are tired of the Supreme Court's willingness to further tilt our elections to the benefit of the Republican Party. There are tens of millions of Americans who are in a state of permanent discouragement about the fairness of our elections. The composition of the US Senate gives the Republican Party a big structural advantage. The electoral college gives the Republican Party a structural advantage. And if political considerations lead the census form to give yet another structural advantage to the Republican Party, relating to US House elections, ordinary people who are upset by that will have an opportunity to express themselves by boycotting the census.

Richard Winger 415-922-9779 PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
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