Don’t allow a lousy census

Go figure. A larger percentage of New Mexicans live in hard-to-reach areas than even the residents of Alaska. That’s more than an interesting tidbit — finding and counting all people is key to completing an accurate and useful U.S. census. For New Mexico, undercounting the population, especially vulnerable citizens, could be devastating.

Yet, with preparations for the 2020 U.S. census being completed now, it appears likely that New Mexico could be undercounted. To save money, the Census Bureau is proposing to rely more on the internet to count people, an idea that is particularly unfortunate in New Mexico. Here, many rural residents lack both access to the internet and to computers. Census Bureau figures show that New Mexico is one of the least connected states, with 1 in 5 households lacking connectivity.

Those numbers likely are higher in rural areas, defeating the whole notion of using online surveys. Some 48 percent of New Mexico’s nearly 2.1 million residents are residing in areas classified as hard to reach, as compared to 44 percent for Alaska and 37 percent for New York. Using the internet to track folks could fall short here.

In the past, census workers mailed surveys and followed up by sending folks door to door when they did not receive responses. That might work in Las Cruces, Santa Fe or Albuquerque, but the doors are fewer and farther between on a reservation or out in ranch country. There also is the difficulty of tracking down transient populations, whether along the border or in neighborhoods where people pick up and move every few months. In 2010, it’s estimated that American Indians on reservations were undercounted by 4.88 percent and people who identified as Hispanic were undercounted by 1.54 percent.

Census numbers are used for everything from setting boundaries for congressional and legislative districts, to helping direct federal funds and for private businesses making a host of decisions. Getting accurate numbers is expensive — the 2020 census, if run like the 2010 edition, could cost some $17.5 billion. To rein in costs, the federal government decided on the online approach and also is considering using data from private companies or other government agencies to fill in gaps for non-responsive households. That is a recipe for bad data. A better way to save money would be for the census to stick to basics — count the people and don’t become sidetracked.

Saving money is worthwhile, but not at the expense of a true count of where people live in this United States. Undercounting minorities and poor people not only can lead to a loss of political power for those groups, but a loss of all-important funding as as result. That adds up to some $6.2 billion a year in New Mexico, paying for food programs, Medicare and Medicaid, highway construction and other essentials.

New Mexico cannot afford an underfunded and poorly run census. Congress needs to restore the budget for the Census Bureau (during the last budget year, Congress provided about $160 million less than the agency had requested) — with or without the cooperation of the president. Advocates for a better count think the administration request is some $303 million below what is needed. They want a fiscal year 2018 appropriation of $1.8 billion.

The need to pay for an adequate census resonates with all political points of view — Northwestern University economist Diane Schanzenbach and Michael Strain, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, recently wrote for Bloomberg News that, “this lack of investment is penny-wise and pound-foolish.” Democratic U.S. Sen. Tom Udall said that an undercount could adversely impact citizens for years to come.

Before that happens, fund the census properly. The U.S. Constitution requires it.