Every ten years, the nation goes through the ritual of the United States Census.  It's an important process because the data gathered is used to determine voting representation and to distribute federal funds for key services like education, health, homeland security and other vital services.  Unfortunately, the Republicans are playing games with the process this time by putting a mystery hold on Obama's nominee for the job of Director of the Census, professor Robert M. Groves of the University of Michigan.  The issue boils down to:

whether to rely on mathematical sampling in addition to old-fashioned, one-at-a-time counting to measure the country's population. Many experts say sampling yields more accurate results than an individual count, especially among those hardest to reach, such as the homeless and the poor. As a rule, though, Republicans grow queasy at seeing the words census and sampling in the same sentence, as those hard-to-count populations generally support Democrats. A government study found that the 2000 census missed more than 4 million people, largely in minority, poor and immigrant communities.

Additionally, the Census is facing an appropriations fight in the coming weeks, as it requested a 135% increase in funding for next year. It's a no-brainer as to why they need the funds to hire additional staff to conduct the surveys.

As anyone can predict, a leaderless and underfunded Census isn't likely to produce an accurate count and an inaccurate count is likely to undercount communities of color, the poor and other harder-to-count groups which tend to vote Democratic.

During our recent House Party, several parties mentioned the Census as one of the primary concerns facing our community.  If you would like to join APAP's ad hoc Census Task Force, please send us an email to curtis at apaforprogress.org.  With just a year before the Census happens, it's important we get our ducks lined up now as the battle has already begun.