One of the reasons the Democrats are working so hard to get Gore in no matter what:
11/22/00 9:50 a.m.
If Gore Wins, GOP Loses House in 2002
Gore-Daley "census sampling" at stake.
By Jim Boulet Jr., executive director, English First
Republican and Democratic partisans agree on one thing: If Gore wins, the
Republicans will gain seats in the House of Representatives in 2002. This
conventional wisdom is based on historical facts - but it is, nonetheless,
dead wrong. The reason is an innovation pushed by the Clinton-Gore
administration known as "census sampling."
The Clinton-Gore administration has sought to correct what they claim is an
"undercount" by the national census. They claim that there are some people
who do not return census forms to the government and who will not respond to
a visit from a census taker - in particular, poor people, residents of big
cities, and illegal aliens.
For this reason, the U.S. Census Bureau wants to guess how many illegal
aliens and other people do not fill out the Census and add its guess to the
official census figures. This procedure, dubbed "census sampling," was
strongly defended by William M. Daley, now chairman of Gore 2000, but
secretary of commerce at the time.
Both Daley and Gore know that if they can hold the White House, they can rig
the census. Once a Gore administration finishes fiddling with the census
figures, the mandatory reapportionment of congressional seats that must
follow a national census would be strongly biased in favor of the Democrats.
A biased census count would mean that more Republicans and fewer Democrats
will lose their seats in the 2002 election.
Thus, if a Gore administration can keep control of the Census Bureau's
computer keys, it could easily enshrine Democratic dominance in Congress
until 2012. Republican party chairman Jim Nicholson once calculated that
census sampling would mean "losing 24 or more GOP congressional seats;
losing 113 GOP state senate seats; [and] losing 297 GOP state house seats."
How would this happen? On February 14, 1999, the New York Times demonstrated
how census sampling would impact just two Pennsylvania congressional seats:
"The 1990 census failed to count nearly 15,000 people in the 2nd District
and counted more than 4,300 in the 13th District twice, according to an
analysis by Democratic redistricting experts who used estimates from the
Census Bureau. Those missed tend to be renters, the poor, children,
transient people and those with low levels of education--people who tend not
to vote. But whether they vote is irrelevant, redistricting experts say.
Every person added to Mr. Fattah's Democratic district through an adjustment
based on sampling reduces the need to move a person.into the Second
District."
The bottom line is that every "virtual person" created by sampling allows
another real person (and probable Democratic voter) to remain in an
otherwise Republican district.
The impact of sampling goes well beyond partisan politics. Census sampling
also means fewer pro-English congressmen and more anti-English congressmen,
if the list of "official Census Partners" on the U.S. Department of Census
web site is any clue.
The list includes anti-English activist groups like the League of United
Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Education Fund (MALDEF), the National Association of Latino Elected and
Appointed Officials (NALEO), the National Education Association (NEA), the
Southern Poverty Law Center (which successfully sued to revoke Alabama's
official English law), TESOL (Teachers Of English to Speakers of Other
Languages), the AFL-CIO (which has announced its plans to try to unionize
illegal aliens) and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Political power isn't the only thing at stake. Census sampling will cost
taxpayers real money. A Leadership Conference on Civil Rights issue brief,
Census 2000 An Overview, notes the importance of census data. Review this
list with an eye to the potential impact of corrupted census data:
Census data directly affects decisions made on all matters of national and
local importance, including education, employment, veterans' services,
public health care, rural development, the environment, transportation and
housing. Many Federal programs are statutorily required to use decennial
data to develop, evaluate and implement their programs;
Federal, state, and county governments use census information to guide the
annual distribution of hundreds of billions of dollars in critical services;
Congressional seats are reapportioned and legislative districts are drawn
based on decennial census data; and,
The data are also used to monitor and enforce compliance with civil rights
statutes, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and employment, housing,
lending, and education anti-discrimination laws.
(It is also worth noting that the Leadership Conference's web site includes
a November 17 press release entitled: "Democracy At Risk: Voting-Rights
Complaints Mounting In Florida." These folks know where their bread is
buttered.)
The partisan and ideological impact of census sampling might be more
tolerable if this sampling technique truly meant a more accurate census. It
doesn't.
Lawrence Osborne, writing in The New Republic, reported that the General
Accounting Office report on the census found that a sampled survey conducted
after the 1990 census was inaccurate at "smaller geographic levels, such as
census tracts." Osborne added that this is "precisely the information that
affects districting and disbursement of federal monies."
Osborne also found that "errors will inevitably be magnified as the
estimates become more detailed." An unnamed member of the Census 2000
Advisory panel told Osborne that "sampling's margin of error for a given
block may reach ten to 15 percent. This means that for a block actually
containing 100 residents, it's possible the bureau would determine its
population to be anywhere from 85 to 115 - hardly an insignificant
difference."
Professor Peter Skerry of the Brookings Institution warned readers of the
Los Angeles Times of yet another problem with sampling: "Another risk
involves the possibility of an incorrect adjustment. Advocates never mention
it, but in 1992, census officials discovered that the original adjusted
numbers that Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher had rejected for
reapportionment a year earlier were found to be incorrect. Just imagine the
imbroglio if the 1990 reapportionment had used adjusted numbers that then
needed to be readjusted."
Michael Weinstein, in the New York Times, noted still another problem with
sampling that may sound familiar to those following the Florida election
recount: "If sampling does a better job locating missing households in one
state than in another, the distribution of House seats and Federal spending
could be made less fair."
There is also the now-familiar problem of human error. Rep. Carolyn Maloney,
the ranking Democrat on the House Census Subcommittee and an ardent advocate
of sampling, managed to provoke a giggle from the Washington Post on this
front. She had written about Thomas Jefferson counting "heads in the
existing 13 states." Then, "200 years, 39 states.later, the task remains
infeasible." The Post did some quick arithmetic: "Thirteen states plus 39?
52 states? So much for sampling. Actual enumeration might still yield 50."
Efforts by Congressional Republicans to address this problem legislatively
were consistently stymied by President Clinton, who threatened to shut down
the government if the Republicans tried to stop his administration's efforts
to contaminate census data.
The Clinton-Gore-Daley intransigence on sampling ultimately provoked a
successful lawsuit by members of Congress against the practice. On January
25, 1999, the Supreme Court ruled, in the case of Department of Commerce v.
U.S. House of Representatives, that the sampled data could not be used to
determine congressional reapportionment between states. (Full disclosure:
English First Foundation filed an amicus curiae brief with the Supreme Court
in this case.)
Unfortunately, the Court said nothing about using the sampled data for
congressional and state-legislative reapportionment within a state. With its
unerring instinct for legal loopholes, the Clinton-Gore administration
announced that the sampling process would begin in June, 2000.
On September 28, Daley's replacement as secretary of commerce, Norman
Mineta, announced that the decision to release sampled data as official
census figures will be left to the Director of the Census.
A Director of the Census appointed by a Bush administration may well (and
correctly) rule against the use of adjusted data. A Director of the Census
appointed by a Gore administration can be expected to insist on the use of
the figures derived from census sampling.
Al Gore and Bill Daley know what is really at stake in the Florida recount.
If they can steal this election, they can not only seize the White House,
but the Congress too.
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