The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Census 2000 Table of Contents

Background

• An Overview
• The Affect of an Undercount on Local Communities
• Children
• Workers And Their Families
• Education
• People of Color
• Individuals With Disabilities
• Senior Citizens
• Rural Areas
• Business

Census Bureau's Plan

• The Census Bureau's Plan For Census 2000
• Legal Challenges To Sampling
• How Do We Know There Is An Undercount?
• The Difference Between Redistricting and Reapportionment
• What The Experts Say
• What The Newspapers Say
• Frequently Asked Questions
• The Importance Of The Ancestry Question
• Achieving Accuracy In The 2000 Census

Census History

• Facts and Figures
• Census History: 1790-1990
• Census Timeline: 1990-2000

Census 2000 In Your Community

• How You Can Start Preparing For A Fair And Complete Count
• Contacting The Census Bureau

Census History: 1790-1990

1790

First Census conducted by Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, who reported two sets of numbers to President Washington. One set, written in black ink, was the official set of population numbers, which came to about 3.9 million. Jefferson also included a second set of numbers in red ink, which he characterized as representing a closer approximation of the actual number of people, even though they had not all been counted. Jefferson (and Washington) believed the true population was closer to 4.0 million. President Washington used the first Presidential veto on the apportionment bill because he did not agree with the formula used to distribute seats in the House of Representatives among the states.

1869

Rep. James Garfield was accused of trying to politicize the Census when he proposed that the Census be organized by congressional district rather than the territories of the U. S. Marshals. At that time, the Marshals were appointed by the Senate which objected to the proposal.

1870

Historians have said that a mistake in distributing electoral college seats based on the 1870 Census gave the presidency to Rutherford B. Haynes rather than Samuel J. Tilden.

1890

After spending eight years tallying by hand the results of the 1880 Census, Census Bureau employees invented the punch card machine for the 1890 Census. The introduction of the punch card made the Census more efficient and allowed earlier release of the data, however, it also introduced a new source of error in the Census as the data was transcribed from the form to the punch card.

1902

Permanent Census Office created in the Department of Commerce and by the end of the 19th Century, professional enumerators had completely replaced U.S. Marshals as the primary Census agents.

1910

Theodore Roosevelt vetoed the Census bill because it did not make Census enumerators part of the civil service, but rather kept them as political appointees.

1920

Congress, faced with a Census that showed a shift in the balance of power from rural areas to urban areas, called the numbers inaccurate. Some suggested that conducting the Census in the winter caused an undercount in rural areas. Congress let the decade go by without reapportioning the House of Representatives.

1940

When more young men showed up for military service than predicted by the Census, the Census Bureau began to study the undercount in the Census. Census Bureau introduced its "short form" questionnaire for the majority of the population, using the "long form" set of more detailed questions for only a sample of the population. Prior Censuses had required all residents to answer all questions.

1960

Following the 1950 Census, noted statistician W. Edwards Demming and his colleagues concluded that the use of enumerators going door to door introduced error into the Census, and that a system where people filled out the form themselves (self-enumeration) would be more accurate. As a result, in 1960, the Census Bureau began to collect the Census forms by mail, and by 1970 most people were counted by mail, not by going door to door. Of course, counting people by mail was criticized when it was introduced.

1970

Both sampling and statistical procedures were used to add persons to the 1970 Census. The 1970 Census included about 4.9 million persons who were added on the basis of various statistical procedures, including sampling. For example, a recheck of a sample of housing units labeled vacant, revealed that about 11.4 percent of the housing units originally classified as vacant were occupied.

1980

The U.S. Department of Justice, under President Carter, issued a memo saying that the use of sampling is both Constitutional and legal. The Census used a statistical procedure called "imputation" to add 762,000 persons into the Census count to correct for the incorrect labeling of a number of housing units as vacant. This resulted in the shift of one Congressional seat from Indiana to Florida. The State of Indiana sued and the courts upheld the use of statistical procedures in the Census.

1987

The U.S. Department of Commerce Under Secretary for Economic Affairs canceled the post Census survey designed to measure and correct the undercount with the 1990 Census. The City of New York, joined by dozens of cities, counties and states, sued the U.S. Commerce Department.

1988

The U.S. Department of Commerce and the City of New York signed an agreement to allow the "Post-Enumeration Survey" to go forward and to be evaluated by 8 experts - four appointed by the Secretary of Commerce and four appointed by the City of New York.

1991

The 8 experts split 4 to 4 with the four appointed by the Secretary recommending against using the survey to correct the Census and the four appointed by New York recommending in favor of correcting the numbers.

In April of 1991, then-Representative (now Speaker of the House) Newt Gingrich (R-GA) sent a letter to Robert A. Mosbacher, Secretary of Commerce, asking him to adjust the Census results for the state of Georgia "to reflect the accurate population of the state so as to include the over 200,000 [who] were not previously included." The adjustment Rep. Gingrich asked for would have relied on the use of statistical sampling that would be prevented by the lawsuit he has now filed. Rep. Gingrich's letter goes on to say, "....the failure to make an adjustment based upon the admitted undercount would seriously affect federal funding which Georgia receives. In effect, Georgia would be required to utilize funds to provide for an additional 200,000 for which it was not receiving funding."

The U.S. Department of Justice, under President Bush, issued a memo saying that the use of sampling is both Constitutional and legal.

A committee of experts at the Census Bureau voted 7 to 2 in favor of correcting the Census counts. The Census Bureau Director Barbara Bryant recommended to the Secretary of Commerce that the Census counts be adjusted to correct for undercounts and overcounts. However, the Secretary decided that the survey as not sufficiently precise to adjust the Census numbers. The City of New York turned back to the court for relief.

In October, Congress unanimously passed and President Bush signed into law the Decennial Census Improvement Act of 1991 (P.L. 102-135) that directed the National Academy of Sciences (the Academy) to study "the means by which the Government could achieve the most accurate population count possible."

1994

The U.S. Department of Justice, under President Clinton, issued a memo saying that the use of sampling is both Constitutional and legal.

1996

In March, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the New York lawsuit that Congress has delegated its authority to run the Census to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and given him broad latitude in how the Census is conducted. The Court ruled that the Secretary was within his authority to reject the recommendations to correct the 1990 Census.