The Census Bureau has no director and the 2010 national census is less than six months away. For political motives, Republican senators have blocked the confirmation of Robert Groves, creating further obstacles for the headcount.
This current problem adds to delays and confusions stemming from the Bush Administration. Obama has had his own trouble finding a Commerce Secretary, who has jurisdiction over the Census Bureau. The White House’s mistakes reached the extreme of recommending that the Office of the President oversee the census, sparking Republican fears that the process would be politicized.
Opposition to Groves stems from his experience in the 2000 census and his commitment to a reliable count. He is a sociologist and demographic specialist who supports the use of population samples in conjunction with numbers derived from the physical count to correct the inevitable census undercount. This inaccuracy most commonly occurs in minority and low-income sectors, which tend to vote for Democrats.
Groves tried to calm Republican suspicions about the use of sampling during his confirmation hearing and was approved without opposition by the Senate committee. Now his confirmation is being blocked in the Senate.
We believe this delay at a key time is a deliberate attempt to harm the integrity of the headcount to prevent it from officially recording our country’s demographic changes. It is a political maneuver that, ironically, is cloaked in claims of not wanting to politicize the process.
The data collected from the census, conducted every 10 years, are important for many official and private purposes —including economic and political uses— in addition to being the statistical basis for the next decade.
Damaging the integrity of the census harms us all. There are thousands of census workers throughout the country, but the operation lacks a leader. The Senate must be allowed to vote and confirm Groves to direct the Census Bureau.
The Census Bureau has no director and the 2010 national census is less than six months away. For political motives, Republican senators have blocked the confirmation of Robert Groves, creating further obstacles for the headcount.
This current problem adds to delays and confusions stemming from the Bush Administration. Obama has had his own trouble finding a Commerce Secretary, who has jurisdiction over the Census Bureau. The White House’s mistakes reached the extreme of recommending that the Office of the President oversee the census, sparking Republican fears that the process would be politicized.
Opposition to Groves stems from his experience in the 2000 census and his commitment to a reliable count. He is a sociologist and demographic specialist who supports the use of population samples in conjunction with numbers derived from the physical count to correct the inevitable census undercount. This inaccuracy most commonly occurs in minority and low-income sectors, which tend to vote for Democrats.
Groves tried to calm Republican suspicions about the use of sampling during his confirmation hearing and was approved without opposition by the Senate committee. Now his confirmation is being blocked in the Senate.
We believe this delay at a key time is a deliberate attempt to harm the integrity of the headcount to prevent it from officially recording our country’s demographic changes. It is a political maneuver that, ironically, is cloaked in claims of not wanting to politicize the process.
The data collected from the census, conducted every 10 years, are important for many official and private purposes —including economic and political uses— in addition to being the statistical basis for the next decade.
