Republicans will lose many seats in Congress due to right-wing paranoia about the census and refusal to fill out census forms, gloats the liberal web site Daily Kos.But wait! What about sampling????
The number of Congressional districts a state gets is based on how many of its citizens return completed census forms. Because voters in conservative states are completing and returning census forms at lower rates than voters in liberal states, conservative states will lose many seats in the House of Representatives that they would otherwise gain due to increases in their population.
After all, the Left has been telling us for a while now that "It's possible to use statistical modeling and sampling methods to supplement the census in order to arrive at estimated counts of various demographic groups."
For example, from a WSJ article on Census sampling last spring:
The sampling debate ignited in the early 1990s after data showed the 1990 census missed more than five million people, including 4.9% of Hispanics and 4.6% of blacks, according to the bipartisan Census Monitoring Board. Using sampling would likely add to the population count in traditionally Democratic areas -- thus benefiting House Democrats in seat allocations.So...if a Census can be adjusted upwards because it "missed" up to 5% of certain population blocks because those liberal blocks were "completing and returning census forms at lower rates", why can't we have upward adjustments when conservatives blocks complete and return census forms at lower rates? That would be only fair.
Oh, wait...I forgot 'fair' is a one-way street.
4 comments:
I'm trying to figure out why conservatives would be doing this. It sounds suspicious, like something that would have happened if ACORN or the SEIU or Saul Alinsky had run the Census.
If these people are serious about repealing this bill and reducing the size of government, why would they unilaterally disarm by torpedoing the census?
Well, except for that pesky Constitution that specifies "[An] Enumeration" for the purposes of representation in the House, an exact count of people, not just a "we think a thousand people live in this area".
You're kidding right? The Republicans were the folks who blocked sampling when it was proposed in the past. How can you possibly use this as a way to talk about the hypocrisy of the left, especially since I have heard nothing about the Democrats blocking such a move now.
Anyway, I'm all for whatever approach is the most accurate. Pretty much every expert agrees that sampling is the best way to get an accurate count. We should be doing it, regardless of who it helps or hurts politically.
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