{"id":1380,"date":"2020-09-15T19:00:46","date_gmt":"2020-09-15T19:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rosen-testing.senate.gov\/2020\/09\/15\/rosen-calls-on-the-census-bureau-to-ensure-a-fair-count-accurate-apportionment-of-congressional-representation-in-the-2020-census\/"},"modified":"2022-07-13T20:23:41","modified_gmt":"2022-07-13T20:23:41","slug":"rosen-calls-on-the-census-bureau-to-ensure-a-fair-count-accurate-apportionment-of-congressional-representation-in-the-2020-census","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rosen.senate.gov\/es\/2020\/09\/15\/rosen-calls-on-the-census-bureau-to-ensure-a-fair-count-accurate-apportionment-of-congressional-representation-in-the-2020-census\/","title":{"rendered":"Rosen Calls on the Census Bureau to Ensure a Fair Count, Accurate Apportionment of Congressional Representation in the 2020 Census"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON, D.C.<\/span><\/span><\/b> \u2013 U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) joined Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Senate colleagues in a letter to U.S. Census Bureau Director Dr. Steven Dillingham calling on the Bureau to provide more details on how it plans to use data from the 2020 Census to apportion congressional representation. The oversight letter asks the Bureau to address concerns over limitations on in-person counting in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as multiple attempts by President Trump to interfere with the census for political purposes.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe write to raise concerns about the data and methodologies that the Census Bureau will use to develop apportionment counts for each of the states. With the president\u2019s unconstitutional memorandum excluding undocumented people from apportionment, coupled with your agency\u2019s decision to end the 2020 Census count one month early, we also raise serious concerns about a fair and accurate distribution of congressional representation\u2014a fundamental and crucial aspect of our constitutional democracy,\u201d wrote the Senators.<\/b> <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe resulting reapportionment report submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives by the president will be an inaccurate, arbitrary, and unconstitutional distribution of congressional seats across the country,\u201d the Senators continued.<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The full text of the letter can be found aqu\u00ed<\/a> and below:<\/span><\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Dear Director Dillingham: <\/span><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We write to raise concerns about the data and methodologies that the Census Bureau will use to develop apportionment counts for each of the states. With the president\u2019s unconstitutional memorandum excluding undocumented people from apportionment, coupled with your agency\u2019s decision to end the 2020 Census count one month early, we also raise serious concerns about a fair and accurate distribution of congressional representation\u2014a fundamental and crucial aspect of our constitutional democracy.<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

From the time of our founding, the Constitution established a democracy premised on the idea that all persons\u2014no matter where they are from, regardless of whether they can vote\u2014deserve representation in our government. To ensure representation for all, the Constitution, through both Article I, Section 2 and the Fourteenth Amendment, explicitly requires the federal government to accurately conduct an \u201cactual Enumeration\u201d of the people. The Fourteenth Amendment places a clear duty on the federal government to count the \u201cwhole number of persons in each State.\u201d In other words, the federal government must count all people living in the United States, whether they are citizens or non-citizens, whether they were born in the United States or in a distant part of the world, whether they are living here in accordance with our laws or not.<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment considered immigrants, undocumented or otherwise, as people entitled to equal representation, insisting that the \u201cwhole immigrant population should be numbered with the people and counted as part of them.\u201d The Supreme Court has affirmed this constitutional understanding, emphasizing that \u201cthe Framers chose to use population . . . as the basis for representation,\u201d and that \u201crepresentatives serve all residents, not just those eligible or registered to vote.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Following the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling to block this administration\u2019s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, the president issued an executive order directing Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to collect citizenship information from other governmental sources. Per this directive, the Census Bureau has amassed a collection of administrative records from various sources\u2014some from existing agreements with federal, state, and local agencies, and others from newly established partnerships.<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

However, the collection of citizenship information is not uniform across the country. This raises the prospect that the Census Bureau will have incomplete information as to the citizenship status of all persons residing in the country. For example, some federal agencies have agreed to share citizenship information with the Census Bureau. However, a person\u2019s immigration status can change over time. The administrative data on a person is only as good as the moment when the agency interacts with that person. For example, a person who entered the country without documentation may have received Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals protection, or may have started a path to citizenship by serving in the military, or may have been granted asylum protection. Depending on when a person interacts with an agency, their status may be very different from what it is currently.<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, not every state is sharing citizenship data.  States such as Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina and South Dakota agreed to share driver’s license and state identification card information. But states like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Illinois denied the Census Bureau\u2019s request to share information. Furthermore, state administrative data on citizenship can be unreliable and inaccurate. As a result, your agency will have arbitrarily collected information based on state officials who decide to share or not information about their citizens, some of which will contain citizenship information, and some will not.<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This arbitrary collection of citizenship information implicates the president\u2019s unconstitutional attempt to exclude undocumented people from fair representation in the Congress. Apportionment is a geographic division of congressional seats.  If only certain states are sharing citizenship information\u2014and the data shared is itself unreliable or inaccurate\u2014and federal data sets do not capture all persons in the country, then the data available to the Census Bureau for apportionment tabulation will be incomplete and run afoul of the Constitution. The resulting reapportionment report submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives by the president will be an inaccurate, arbitrary, and unconstitutional distribution of congressional seats across the country, based on states that either had or did not have citizenship information for selected portions of their population. An arbitrary collection of data will produce a bad output based on that data\u2014garbage in, garbage out.<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, the Census Act prohibits the Census Bureau from using sampling methods to determine apportionment.  In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Census Bureau\u2019s proposed uses of statistical sampling to calculate the population for purposes of congressional apportionment following the 2000 decennial census. A similar effort by the agency to use statistical sampling to determine the numbers of undocumented people in each state should be rejected by the courts.<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

These problems are further exacerbated by the agency\u2019s decision to end self-response and non-response follow up operations a month early\u2014from October 31 to September 30. The shortened schedule risks the accuracy of the Census Bureau\u2019s data products, including the apportionment tabulation, and raises risks that errors will neither be found nor fixed. A federal judge recently issued a temporary restraining order to stop the Census Bureau from winding down or altering 2020 Census field operations until a September 17 hearing. Furthermore, the administration\u2019s refusal to include statutory deadline extensions in their negotiations with congressional leaders on coronavirus relief legislation, raise questions about their commitment to addressing these concerns.<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

To address some of these concerns, we ask that you provide answers to the following questions:<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span> <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n