After hearing that many people in Chicago were receiving duplicate census forms, I began to wonder if that might throw the accuracy or impartiality of the process into doubt. The particularly cynical side of me wondered if bureaucratic slip-ups could be intentionally targeted to engineer a desired result in certain parts of the country. I know what you're thinking, but no - I don't also suspect that the Russians are behind it.
Have no fear! The Census Bureau assures me that they have "procedures to eliminate duplicate forms. There is an ID number associated with each household’s form. This prevents us from counting you more than once." Ah, an ID number. Thank goodness. Now I can sleep easy.
Okay, so let's assume that the ultra-professional temporary hires being paid to sort millions of forms for the Census Bureau have neither the means nor the inclination to tamper with the super-duper, double-encrypted, kryptonite-laced ID numbers that determine distribution of government funds to their own neighborhoods. What assurance can people have that political considerations aren't driving the determination of which communities will get two shots at the Census?
Well, today Steve Pendlebury at AOL News put all my fears to rest. You see, the Census Bureau is only sending duplicate forms to "about 40 million homes in areas where response was low in the 2000 census."
Ah. So this isn't a tactic to engineer a desired result, it's just a way to...um...give people in certain parts of the country a little extra encouragement to fill out the form. There. No problem, right? I mean, it's only going to places where response was low in 2000.
Question: If the purpose of the Census is to give us an accurate count of the population, how is it possible to say that response in a particular area is "low"? I understand that there are other indicators of population that allow us to infer a rough estimate to compare with census returns. But if a preconceived idea of population in a particular city is used to determine the accuracy of the census...what is the purpose of the census?
More importantly, if the Census Bureau is empowered to take extra measures to ensure a particular rate of return in certain areas of the country, how childlike would one have to be to claim that this process (being inherently opaque to public scrutiny) is not subject to political considerations or pressures. And by implication, how can we have any confidence in the results?
When the government takes steps to engineer results that circumvent their notion of public stupidity, the result is always a fiasco. This is because government is made up of people - the same people whose stupidity the government aims to outflank. And all people are much better at pointing out the stupidity of others than they are at recognizing their own. And yes, that includes me. I have no idea how stupid I am.
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