Census Switch Worries Some
Return to Paper Forms Leaves Little Time for Adjustment

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 8, 2008

With the 2010 Census less than two years away, independent demographers and congressional overseers are worried that the Census Bureau will not be prepared to accurately record the nation's racial and ethnic minorities, illegal immigrants and the poor -- groups that historically have been undercounted.

Much of the concern stems from the bureau's decision in April to scrap a plan to use wireless hand-held devices to collect information from people who don't mail back their census forms. Minorities, immigrants and poor people are more likely to lack fixed addresses and to find census forms confusing or suspicious and therefore are less likely to return them by mail, experts said. Following up with home visits is crucial to ensuring that they are tallied.

During previous censuses, agency field workers conducting follow-ups recorded people's answers using pen and paper. The hand-held devices were supposed to enable workers to relay the information to headquarters much faster, making it easier to avoid duplicate visits to a home and freeing them to go to more locations. Instead, technological problems with the devices have left the bureau little time to organize the switch back to the original system.

"We're really treading on new ground with such a large change being made at such a late date," said Terry M. Ao, director of census and voting programs at the Asian American Justice Center, which serves on the Census Bureau's Advisory Council for the 2010 Census. "It just makes me very nervous that things are not going to happen when they need to happen."

Using the devices also would have been considerably cheaper than the paper-based system. And although Congress approved $210 million in extra funding for the 2010 Census as part of the supplemental budget signed by the president June 30, many watchers wonder whether, amid the worsening economic climate, Congress and the White House will come through with the rest of the $2.2 billion to $3 billion that the return to a paper-based census is expected to add to the $11.5 billion cost.

"I think it's very risky to take the funding for granted," said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former chief staff member on the House subcommittee that oversees the census and now a consultant to the Census Project, a broad coalition of stakeholders in the census. "Congress doesn't have money to throw around, and I think [members] are genuinely upset with some of the bumps in the road so far. They will want to know that the money will be well spent."

If the bureau does not get sufficient funding for the shift to a paper-based follow-up, said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, "my concern is that the Census Bureau is going to start shortchanging programs they consider less essential, such as paid advertising targeting [under-covered] groups."

Steve H. Murdock, who became director of the Census Bureau six months ago, said the agency faces challenges. But he said he has corrected management problems that contributed to the breakdown of the plan for hand-held devices and incorporated procedures to anticipate and correct problems created by the compressed preparation schedule.

"Our people are reinvigorated by the new plan and ready to go forward," he said. "The Census Bureau, as always, is totally dedicated to providing a good census for the American people."

As for reaching out to historically hard-to-cover groups, Murdock said the bureau is carefully designing a $200 million paid advertising campaign and hiring 680 specialists to partner with local community leaders. For the first time, census questionnaires will be available in Spanish, and guides directing non-English speakers to census workers who can translate for them will be printed in about 50 languages.

"I am strongly committed to those programs and have no plans to cut back on them," Murdock said.

The stakes are high because of the enormous role the once-a-decade head count plays in American life. The Constitution mandates that census results be used to apportion the number of representatives each state sends to Congress.

The figures also are used to draw the boundaries of state voting districts. Then there's the $300 billion a year in federal grants allocated according to census results, not to mention the data's importance to state and local government planners as they consider construction of roads and schools.

"The implications of an undercount would be disastrous," Vargas said. "It would mean we'd be denying fair representation and resources to the people who need it most -- and who are undercounted precisely because they face those challenges."

Already the late switch in procedures forced the bureau to drop a dry run of the follow-up interview process from the "dress rehearsal" it traditionally holds two years before the actual count, depriving the bureau of the insight into potential glitches it usually gets at this stage of the preparations.

Pushing the census back from its scheduled start in April 2010 was not an option: To meet the legally mandated December 31, 2010, deadline for delivering population counts to the president, census activities must be carried out according to a strict schedule.

Even under the best of circumstances, the task of counting the more than 301 million residents of the United States can seem impossibly daunting. The scale and technical complexity mean that even minor hiccups can spiral into major crises.

A report last month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, for instance, noted that if workers conducting the 2000 Census had spent just one minute more at each household during follow-up visits it would have added almost $10 million to the overall cost.

The GAO report, as well as a similar report last month by the inspector general of the Commerce Department, also noted that such other crucial elements as a new strategy for sending out second mailings and dealing with late mail returns were not included in the dress rehearsal.

Elements that have been tested, including a plan for field workers to use the hand-held devices to verify the bureau's address list in advance of the census, have continued to experience significant problems.

"The Bureau has taken important steps towards managing the changes it plans," the GAO report concluded. "Yet much remains uncertain."