Sampling

• This is not a statistical issue.
• It is not a Constitutional issue (yet).
• It is a political issue.

How did it all start?

1. The Constitution gives Congress the power to determine how the Census is taken
2. The Census determines apportionment
3. Apportionment determines power
4. The Constitution allows political parties to determine their own access to power via the Census.

What does that mean to the parties?

• The Republican perception is that a sample-adjusted headcount would apportion more seats to Democrats.
• The Democratic perception is that an unadjusted headcount would apportion more seats to Republicans.
• Only the perceived impact of a sample-adjusted headcount on a party's access to power is at issue.

Reason for this perception:

1. The adjusted headcount would be used for apportionment.
2. The adjustment would be to add to the headcount persons believed missed via sampling.
3. It is believed that most of the missing groups of people have characteristics that correspond to those of persons identified as likely to have Democratic leanings.

Why did the Supreme Court decide against sampling?

1. The Supreme Court defers to statutory authority whenever those statutes are deemed to address the issue.
2. The statutory authority in question is the Census Act of 1954
3. As the two parties trade off control of Congress, the Census Act gets amended.
4. By 1999, the Census Act had been amended to forbid sampling for reapportionment by 2 different Republican-controlled congresses.

This isn't the last word.

• The Supreme Court has yet to make any decisions about the constitutionality of sampling as an adjustment method to a headcount.
• Only at that point will sampling per se become relevant.
• The Supreme Court will have to decide whether sample-adjusted population figures are the same as an "actual enumeration."
• In short: is sampling counting?

If sampling couldn't be used to apportion, how could the Census Bureau send out the long form to 1 in 6 people?

• The Supreme Court merely upheld the existing Census Act.
• The section of the Census Act that provides for sampling in all other cases remains unchanged because it doesn't affect party access to power.

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Redistricting

Principles Used to Redraw District Lines

• 8 congressional, 67 state senate, 134 state house
• Nesting of 2 house district per senate district
• Equal Population
• Principles of Redistricting
• Contiguity and compactness
• Minority representation
• Preservation of political subdivisions
• Preservation of communities of interest
• Political competitiveness
• Tom Gillaspy, Minnesota State Demographer, says it best: http://www.mnplan.state.mn.us/pdf/2000/demog/Redistricing.pdf
  Alternative Site: Redistricing.pdf

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Race

2000 not directly comparable to 1990:

1990	2000
1 person, 1 race	1 person, 1+race
American Indian or Alaskan Native Asian or Pacific Islander Black White	American Indian or Alaska Native Asian Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander Black or African American White

Ethnicity

• "Hispanic" is an ethnicity, not a race
• An ethnicity can be of any race
• Ethnicity is bound to racial identifications
• Therefore, Hispanic data of 1990 also not comparable to 2000.
• Example of an indirectly comparative table: http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t1/tab04.pdf
  Alternative Site: tab04.pdf

Consequences

• Most federal funding is determined in terms of 1990 categories
• How can 2000 results be made to fit those categories?
• They must be aggregated back together in orders of precedence defined by the Office of Budget and Management (OMB)
• American Indian or Alaska Native
• Asian
• Black or African American
• Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
• White
• the four double race combinations most frequently reported in recent studies
• multiple race combinations that comprise more than one percent of the population of interest
• a balance category for any one not otherwise classified
• Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/bulletins/b00-02.html

Impact of Multi-racial Options

• For 2000, 1.7% of Minnesotans chose more than one race.
• Within minority groups, multiple identification has significantly greater impact.
• Multiracial identification in Minnesota is more common among children than adults. Source: State Demography Office Handout. 4/27/01.
• An excellent article on the subjects of sampling, redistricting and race is
  Color by Numbers: Race, Redistricting and the 2000 Census. Nathaniel Persily. 2000 Minnesota Law Review. 85 Minn. L. Rev. 899

What about Hmong, Somali and similar groups?

• Asian Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino and Vietnamese group numbers will appear in Summer 2001
• Other Asian categories such as Hmong and Cambodian had to be written in and will take longer
• Other nationalities will be identified by country of birth or nationality
  • These are long form data
  • Long form data will not be available until 2002 or later
  • Sample Nationalities: Somalis, Ethiopians, Nigerians, and Bosnians
• The State Demographic Center says it best at http://www.demography.state.mn.us/Cen2000redistricting/Cen00racediscuss.html

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