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The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. statistician

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Re: The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. statistician

#81

Post by pjc50 »

VLM wrote: post #42

I realize for political reasons we have to only support one side via extreme sophistry, essentially the whole topic is a giant dog whistle test to make sure our community is politically pure. However its VERY hard to ignore the reality that essentially 100% of the US population has no difficulty, on average, kinda paying electric bills and property tax bills and phone bills. Part of the sophistry is pretending that n…

Not paying your electricity or cable bill may result in denial of service. Not responding to the census has no obvious consequences.

Re: The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. statistician

#82

Post by plushpuffin »

rubyist5eva wrote: post #45
tolbish wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thought it was sarcasm at first, but it appears rubyistSeva genuinely isn't aware that the Democratic nominee was blocked four years ago on the basis of it being an election year, only for the Republican party to turn around and do exactly that this year.

The Republican party had no reason to hold confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland - the votes did not exist to confirm him. The role of the Senate is to provide advice and consent - there was no consent so there was no reason to do it. This year is different - Republicans hold the majority of the Senate and the White House. This nominee has the votes.

The Senate has traditionally accepted the president's nominee assuming s/he was qualified. Garland had previously been out forward by the GOP as an example of a qualified and respected judge. And let's not forget that had Clinton won, the GOP was determined to keep that seat on the court empty for 4 years. They said as much. And when they refused to even consider Garland they also said that their newly made-up rule would apply if the shoe was on the other foot. They clearly didn't mean that, and the rationale for confirming Barrett that you are parroting above is just that, a rationale. An excuse. Don't pretend the rest of us are stupid. We know exactly why your position on this has changed and it has everything to do with the fact that your side has the temporary power to do what it wants.

Re: The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. statistician

#83

Post by woo49 »

stdbrouw wrote: post #62
VLM wrote: post #42

I realize for political reasons we have to only support one side via extreme sophistry, essentially the whole topic is a giant dog whistle test to make sure our community is politically pure. However its VERY hard to ignore the reality that essentially 100% of the US population has no difficulty, on average, kinda paying electric bills and property tax bills and phone bills. Part of the sophistry is pretending that n…

You seem to be extremely certain of your position and seem to find it impossible to believe that Robert Santos, the statistician in question, could have any motive other than a political one in sounding the alarm. However, "if people can pay their electric bill then surely they can respond to the census" is not a fact and it's not a logical argument, it's just your gut feeling, which you seem to find a superior sourc…

Robert Santos works for the Urban Institute which the LA times has called 'leading liberal think tank'. [1]

It's impossible to read a comment about the census without looking at the political affiliation of who makes the comment.

It's also unfortunately that articles like this don't make these affiliations clear. Gives fuel to 'fake news' and 'liberal media' arguments.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/1988-06-12/news/mn-7095_1_urban-...

Re: The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. statistician

#84

Post by WillPostForFood »

bo1024 wrote: post #14
CincinnatiMan wrote: post #3

> This means [it eliminated] literally a third of the time allocated for the Census Bureau to knock on doors, to try to enumerate the hard-to-count individuals, which happen to be African Americans, Latinx populations, immigrants, people in heavily transitory situations, tribal lands, some Asians. Random question but why would some races have more trouble than others responding to the census? Is it more to do with po…

There are many reasons. They discuss poverty in the article. I would agree with cultural distrust of government officials. And very importantly, everything around the citizenship question/issue. > The notion of these counts ever being used for enforcement — basically targeting high population, low citizenship-count blocks for ICE raids or whatever — that would be really, really problematic. Stepping back, think in ge…

Because of the bad optics of this, the US census has traditionally been extremely independent from law enforcement. The government has recently been attacking this barrier e.g. with the citizenship question

Two points on history and tradition. The census was originally carried out by the US Marshals. That should indicate the importance and weight of the project. The citizenship question was part of the census until 2000 (1950 short form, 2000 long form).

If you are using the census to distribute voting power to states, and the distribution is based on count of citizens, not people, then it is a fair question to ask.

Re: The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. statistician

#86

Post by mkl »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #46
mkl wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised they're not just cancelling or postponing it. In 2011, earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, displaced thousands of people. The national census scheduled for the following month was cancelled, and a replacement was later organised for 2013. I think the theory was that delayed statistics were better than unreliable and incomplete statistics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_census#History

The US constitution requires them to do it every 10 years, and it was last done in 2010. More cynically it’s been really politicised and not doing it this year would risk the Democrats being in power to do it next year.

Wow, it's kind of astounding to me that which party is in power could make a difference to a census.

Being in the country's constitution does make it difficult to delay.

Re: The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. statistician

#87

Post by woo49 »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #28
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish both sides would realizing their destroying people’s faith in the system And I wish people would stop saying 'both sides' when it's 95% only one side. That's the issue. One side is now against census so people aren't represented, restricting voting so people don't get a say, and people keep saying 'both sides'.

I don't understand the Democratic side here either. There's a question of citizenship, but census data is used to determine allocation of electoral college votes. The electoral college system being something that I support but that Democrats keep trying to undermine. Yeah if you come here undocumented, or illegally, there's pretty natural consequences. I don't think anyone should ignore that. And they seem to want un…

I agree. It would be much better if both sides were at least honest.

for example, the Democrats could say "we understand some electoral college votes will be indirectly allocated to illegal immigrants, we also understand that because liberal states have more illegal immigrants it will help the left more than the right, but that's the price to pay for counting every actual US citizen."

The republicans could say, 'we want to make sure only US citizens count in terms of votes, and we will lose some actual US citizens plus we will undercount illegal immigrants (which is useful in other, non voting related ways) in order to ensure that.'

Then we can have a conversation. The way this dialog is being had, with liberal statisticians making 'scientific arguments' and republicans attacking electoral integrity is just a mess.

Re: The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. statistician

#88

Post by OnlyOneCannolo »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #28
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish both sides would realizing their destroying people’s faith in the system And I wish people would stop saying 'both sides' when it's 95% only one side. That's the issue. One side is now against census so people aren't represented, restricting voting so people don't get a say, and people keep saying 'both sides'.

I don't understand the Democratic side here either. There's a question of citizenship, but census data is used to determine allocation of electoral college votes. The electoral college system being something that I support but that Democrats keep trying to undermine. Yeah if you come here undocumented, or illegally, there's pretty natural consequences. I don't think anyone should ignore that. And they seem to want un…

Enumeration Clause of the Constitution says that the census counts everyone.

Legislators can change that through legislation. They're not supposed to sabotage the accuracy of the census.

Re: The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. statistician

#89

Post by Retric »

pessimizer wrote: post #70
Retric wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not be close to 50:50 but it’s not 95:5. Less tainted is still tainted. When I say both sides, I mean both sides. Gerrymandering to give minorities districts for example does the same thing to undermine people’s faith in the system. The goal should be to outlaw gerrymandering not find some way to allow it to be useful politically. Should people in DC maintain the right to vote? IMO they should, but it’s beco…

Nobody is gerrymandering to give minorities districts. People are either splitting minorities between several districts in order to keep them from having a say, or packing them all into one district to keep surrounding districts from having Democratic majorities (and to attack people having a problem with the shape of the district as attackers of the only district representing that minority.) > Should people in DC ma…

Maryland and California both have several arguably well intentioned though racially motivated districts. The Supreme Court has ruled that splitting minority districts is a violation of the U.S. Constitution as it weakens their voice. Which has made this a common fight between the parties.

However, this idea that districts should be advantageous to some group is inherently corrosive to the idea of democracy. You can’t have your cake and eat it to, either districts need to be arbitrary lines drawn without political influence or your just deciding what influences are allowed.

PS: Packing means these districts can also be used to hurt democrats by creating a single district with extreme bias you can create several safe districts which would otherwise be contested.

Re: The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. statistician

#90

Post by rubyist5eva »

Aunche wrote: post #68
rubyist5eva wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Republican party had no reason to hold confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland - the votes did not exist to confirm him. The role of the Senate is to provide advice and consent - there was no consent so there was no reason to do it. This year is different - Republicans hold the majority of the Senate and the White House. This nominee has the votes.

In that case, the Senate can always just refuse to confirm a new justice whenever the majority isn't the same party as the president.

yes, they can.
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