U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

71–389 DTP WASHINGTON : 2001

OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: ACCURACY

AND COVERAGE EVALUATION [ACE]—STILL

MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MAY 19, 2000

Serial No. 106–207

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2250

Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

LEE TERRY, Nebraska

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

DAVID A. KASS, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian

LISA SMITH ARAFUNE, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS

DAN MILLER, Florida, Chairman

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

——— ———

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

JANE COBB, Staff Director

LARA CHAMBERLAIN, Professional Staff Member

MICHAEL MIGUEL, Professional Staff Member

ANDREW KAVALIUNAS, Clerk

MICHELLE ASH, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on May 19, 2000 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Prewitt, Kenneth, Director, Bureau of the Census, accompanied by John

H. Thompson, Associate Director for Decennial Census; and Howard

Hogan, statistician, Chief, Decennial Statistical Studies Division ........... 29

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York:

Letter dated May 18, 2000 ....................................................................... 11

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 13

Miller, Hon. Dan, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida:

CRS report concerning sampling ............................................................. 71

December 1992 Federal Register ............................................................. 44

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 4

Various editorials ...................................................................................... 17

Prewitt, Kenneth, Director, Bureau of the Census, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 35

Ryan, Hon. Paul, a Representative in Congress from the State of Wisconsin, letter dated May 17, 2000 ..................................................................... 23

(1)

OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: ACCURACY

AND COVERAGE EVALUATION [ACE]—STILL

MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS

FRIDAY, MAY 19, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., in room

2247 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dan Miller (chairman

of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Miller, Ryan, Maloney, and Davis of Illinois.

Staff present: Jane Cobb, staff director; Chip Walker, deputy

staff director; Lara Chamberlain, Michael Miguel, and Amy Althoff,

professional staff members; Andrew Kavaliunas, clerk; Michelle

Ash, minority counsel; David McMillen and Mark Stephenson, minority professional staff members; and Earley Green, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. MILLER. Good morning. We will begin with opening statements first, and then we’ll hear from Director Prewitt and then

we’ll proceed.

Director Prewitt, thank you for being with us here today. I’m

pleased to hear that the Census Bureau is proceeding on schedule

for nonresponse followup. This is the most difficult part of the census with respect to ACE, or the estimation plan.

As we move into the politically charged arena of the Bureau’s estimation plan, one of the greatest concerns to Congress and the scientific community is that we will not be provided all of the information and data necessary to evaluate the results in a timely manner.

I want to get the Director’s assurances today that these numbers

will be fully scrutinized by the Bureau and the scientific community at large prior to their release for public use.

As many of you know, in 1990 there were numerous errors found

in the sampling plan known as the PES. After the census in 1991

the Bureau discovered a computer error in the PES that inflated

the undercount by 1 million people. Then, during a series of evaluations that took almost 2 years, the Bureau discovered more errors in the PES leading to even more erroneous enumerations.

In 1992, the experts at the Bureau who reviewed the 1990 census

estimation plan issued what’s known as the CAPE report. These

experts reported that, ‘‘About 45 percent of the revised estimated

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undercount is actually measured by us and not measured

undercount.’’ In other words, in 1990 almost half of the statistical

adjustment was wrong.

Once States draw their district lines you can’t come back a year

later and say, ‘‘sorry, we made a mistake, we added or subtracted

too many people.’’ If it took almost 2 years in 1990 to find the errors, how can you ensure that we don’t have the same errors this

time in only a few months?

From a practical perspective, there is no guarantee that this plan

is even viable. Despite claims to the contrary, the National Academy panel has not given the ACE a full blessing. While certain

groups have endorsed statistical estimation as a concept, this is a

far cry from an endorsement of the actual plan.

To give you an analogy, we all know that it’s possible to build

a spaceship to go to the moon or Mars. Yet, as with all very complex scientific tasks—and the estimation plan is immensely complex—your spaceship could blow up on the launching pad or burn

up in the atmosphere as has happened twice recently.

What assurances do we have from the Director that their scientific plan won’t blow up? Just because something may be theoretically possible doesn’t mean it can be done.

Despite claims by the Democrats, Republican opposition to the

estimation plan is based on fundamental, unresolved problems. Is

the plan constitutional, is it legal, is it in the best interest of our

Nation as a whole, and simply, will it work?

In January 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that sampling or estimating portions of the population was illegal. Democrats read the

decision to outlaw the issue of sampling for purposes of apportionment only, while Republicans read the decision to prohibit the use

of estimation for redistricting as well.

In the wake of that decision, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service issued an opinion, ‘‘A closer examination of other

parts of the Court’s opinion indicates that it did not interpret those

other purposes as necessarily including at least intrastate redistricting.’’

Unfortunately, this administration was not going to be deterred

by even the Supreme Court. In a political move clearly against the

best interests of the Nation, the Clinton-Gore administration decided to conduct a two-number census. This unwise decision will

clearly throw the States into legal turmoil over the census, the

likes of which this Nation has never seen.

And while the Democrats and their so-called experts have

claimed that it is perfectly legal to use estimation for purposes of

redistricting, I would simply offer a few words of caution. These are

the same so-called experts that said estimation could be used for

apportionment. Those on the estimation side of this disagreement

have yet to win a court case.

The fundamental purpose of the census is to fairly and accurately apportion and distribute political representation. Our political system, for the most part, is the envy of many other nations.

One of the foundations of our system is its relative transparency.

Our elections are carefully scrutinized and the appeals process

clear. If warranted, for example, an election can be challenged,

voter registration records can be checked and rechecked, ballots reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:01 May 21, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\71389.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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counted. With estimation, it’s simply not possible to verify whether

or not a person added actually exists or if a person subtracted was

done so rightfully.

Additions and subtractions exist only in a virtual world, a world

based not in reality, but in the complex mathematical formulas

that could be right or wrong and understood only by a few select

statisticians and government bureaucrats. Census estimation, no

matter who is crunching the numbers, is not a system that lends

itself to trust and integrity, two cornerstones of our electoral process.

And while we have spent billions of dollars to motivate people to

participate in the census, something that all sides agree is a civic

ceremony, what would motivate someone to participate in the census when they can sit back and be estimated? Why fill out your

census forms at all if the government will compensate for you anyway? And even worse, how can it be acceptable that someone does

their civic obligation, fills out their form on time and sends it in,

only to have the government say they count as less than a whole

person? Is this not a violation of one man, one vote? Can the Director guarantee that every person who filled out a form and only one

form will be counted as one person and not less? The answer, disturbingly, is no.

The fact not widely talked about in the Bureau is, there will be

people who do everything right, fill out their census forms, send

them in on time and will be counted as less than a whole person.

While I fully support expending the resources to reach the undercounted, I wholeheartedly oppose the concept of counting someone

as less than a whole person.

The census has traditionally been constructed of millions and

millions of individuals. However, this estimation plan has introduced a new level of demographic grouping that is very dangerous

in its assumptions. The assumption that people within racial

groups act alike and have the same tendencies is something that

this Nation has been trying to overcome for over 100 years, but

now the Census Bureau has gone down that exact path.

No longer are we individuals. Now we are White males, 25 to 35,

who rent or own. We are Cubans in Miami, Mexicans in Texas,

Puerto Ricans in New York, that according to the Census Bureau

are all alike and thus are grouped together. We are Asians, including Chinese, Japanese and Koreans from Seattle to Washington,

DC, grouped together like so many choices.

The by-products of this estimation plan are not healthy for our

Nation. From civic disengagement to simply throwing one man-one

vote out the window, we in the long run hurt our Nation.

We must do everything possible to eliminate the undercount. We

must also remain faithful to our Constitution, the law and the civic

health of our Nation. Clearly this administration is putting politics

ahead of sound public policy. Unfortunately, it will take the courts

once again to protect the integrity of our census.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Dan Miller follows:]

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Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I must say I find the

title of today’s hearing very curious. It’s called Status of the 2000

Census, Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation, Still More Questions

Than Answers. Yet it seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that there are

almost no unanswered questions, only questions which you don’t

like the answers to.

Despite the cautious stance taken by the Census Bureau, I believe that the 2000 census may well be the best, fairest and most

accurate census ever, a fitting way to start the 21st century. It will

be that not just because of the operational successes we have seen

to date, but because it incorporates modern scientific methods into

its design.

We all know the problems of the 1990 census. It contained millions of errors and was the first to be less accurate than the census

before it. The 1990 census had an error rate of over 10 percent, 8.4

million people were missed, 4.4 million people were counted twice

and 13 million people were counted in the wrong place. And we

know who the people were that were missed. They were children.

They were minorities in urban and rural areas.

The Census Bureau, working with the National Academy of

Sciences at the direction of Congress in a bipartisan way, has tried

to fix these errors, but there are politicians who, for partisan reasons, have tried to make sure that it doesn’t happen. They have

tried to make sure that minorities in poor, urban and rural areas

and children are not undercounted.

The Census Bureau first discovered the problem of the

undercount during World War II, 60 years ago, when more young

men showed up for the draft than the Census Bureau thought existed. For young Black men, nearly 13 percent more showed up for

the draft than they expected, showing that there was a disproportionate undercount, particularly for minorities.

We now know that the people missed in the census are the urban

and rural poor and minorities. We also know that the people counted twice are primarily people who are fortunate enough to have

two homes. They’re suburbanites. Those errors shift economic resources and political representation unfairly. Those who oppose the

use of modern scientific methods in the census would ensure that

millions of people missed in the census are left out permanently

and the millions of people counted twice are forever kept in. That

is fundamentally unfair and it is unjust and it must stop, and that

is why this census has been called the civil rights issue of the decade—whether we will correct, knowing people that are left out,

whether we will do what every scientist says needs to be done to

make sure that they are counted and represented.

The closer the Census Bureau has gotten to developing a way to

fix these errors, the harder the opponents of a modern census have

worked to stop them. In 1987, the professionals at the Census Bureau proposed a 300,000-household survey to measure and correct

for the errors of the census. The politicians at the Reagan Commerce Department stopped that planning dead in its tracks. Correcting the 1990 census would have been stopped for good had not

the great city of New York—and I am proud to be a Representative

from that great city—the city of New York sued.

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Finally, in late 1989, the Commerce Department allowed planning for the quality control survey to go forward. However, instead

of allowing it to be a 300,000-household survey, the politicians at

then-President Bush’s Commerce Department cut it in half, and

the Secretary reserved the right to block the use of the corrected,

modern, scientific numbers. Not surprisingly, he overruled his own

Republican-appointed Census Director, Dr. Barbara Bryant, and

the professional nonpartisans at the Census Bureau, and he did

block their use.

In 1997, the opponents of a fair and accurate census, they held

up a disaster relief bill to the Midwest because they attached language to this important bill that would have prohibited the use of

modern scientific methods. They believed that the President of the

United States, when the country was in disaster, people were suffering, their homes were under water, that he would not have the

nerve to veto the disaster relief bill over the census, over an accurate census, yet the President vetoed the disaster relief bill over

the census because of their crass attempt to manipulate the numbers in the census; and he received editorial support clear across

this country.

And I would like permission, Mr. Chairman, to put all of those

editorials in the record of this hearing.

Mr. MILLER. OK.

Mrs. MALONEY. In 1997 and again in 1998, opponents of a fair

and accurate census, those who did not want minorities and the

poor and children in urban and rural areas counted, tried to use

the appropriations process, the budget process, to legislate how

census 2000 would be conducted by threatening to hold up two

budgets and close down the government. Their attempt to block the

use of modern scientific methods failed again.

Principally at the direction of Congress, the National Academy of

Sciences has conducted extensive research and review of the planning and implementation of the 2000 census throughout the decade

of the 1990’s, working with the Census Bureau. Four separate panels of independent experts have consistently supported the use of

modern scientific statistical methods, in general. More recently, a

fifth panel, the Academy’s panel to review the 2000 census has endorsed the Bureau’s specific plans for the ACE program in census

2000; and I would like permission to put in the record the five statistical reports and scientific reports that have come out in support

of the Bureau’s plans.

May they be put in the record?

Mr. MILLER. No objection.

Mrs. MALONEY. The overwhelming majority of the scientific community has concluded that if we are to have a 2000 census that is

fair and accounts for all residents of this country, regardless of race

or economic status, it must be a census that uses modern methods.

And I would now like to put into the record this list of organizations that supports the use of modern scientific statistical methods,

and it includes all kinds of associations from across this country.

Mr. MILLER. Without objection.

Mrs. MALONEY. The General Accounting Office, the Commerce

Department’s Inspector General and George Bush’s Census Director, Dr. Barbara Bryant, are all on record in their support.

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The Census Bureau has presented its plans for the use of modern

methods to the scientific community on a continuing basis since

1996. This subcommittee and the Census Monitoring Board have

been kept apprised of those plans since their inception, and the

Secretary’s 2000 Census Advisory Committee, Race and Ethnic Advisory Committees and Census Advisory Committees of Professional Associations have all been briefed on these plans as well.

Again, Mr. Chairman, there are not any unanswered questions

about the ACE program, only answers that the Republican Conference and the RNC doesn’t like. I have heard the opponents of

modern methods say repeatedly that they are a, ‘‘risky experimental plan that is inaccurate, that all we need to do is use old

methods and try really hard to just count everyone.’’ Well, the only

thing that is risky is not using modern methods.

Over the course of the years, working on this issue, I have repeatedly heard from people, how do you know that you missed people, how do you know that there is an undercount? Well, the Census Bureau is unique among government agencies in that they tell

you how well they have done. And the only way we know that the

1990 census was less accurate than the one before it was the 1990

post-enumeration survey, the use of modern statistical methods.

And the only way we will be able to determine the most accurate

count for the 2000 census is from the results of the ACE program,

the use of modern statistical methods. In the end, it is only

through those methods that we will have the most accurate census

possible.

I would also like to comment briefly on the Supreme Court case.

Very simply, in the Supreme Court case, the Republicans won one

and the Democrats won two. The Court held that you could not use

modern scientific methods for the apportionment of seats between

the States, but if at all feasible, you could use it for the distribution

of Federal funds which is tremendously important since the Federal Government distributes over $185 billion a year based on

funding formulas that are tied to census numbers. That means that

over $3 trillion in the next decade will be distributed on these numbers, and we need to make them accurate; and they also held that

it could be used for redistricting within the States, and that is why

we have to come forward with two numbers, one for reapportionment between the States and one for redistricting and the distribution of funds.

I’d also like, Mr. Chairman, to briefly comment on the e-mail

that you made public last week. Mr. Chairman, I continue to believe that it was inappropriate to make this public without first

talking to its author, especially since you used it to imply a vast

conspiracy by the census to hide information from Congress. And

I remain disturbed by the fact that I had little more than an hour’s

notice of this e-mail’s existence prior to our hearing. And I still am

disturbed that GAO, a supposedly nonpartisan independent body,

contacted the staff of the majority but did not contact the staff of

the Democratic minority.

The e-mail may be poorly worded, but after speaking to its author, I called the gentleman. He is an honest, hardworking American. He is a former Marine. He is working very hard now for his

country on this great civic ceremony, the census. I believe him, that

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he made an honest mistake that is not in any way evidence of a

systematic attempt to deny information to Congress.

Nevertheless, it seems to have raised questions in your mind

which should be put to rest. Therefore, I have written to the Comptroller of GAO asking him to investigate this incident as soon as

possible and to have the GAO determine if there is an intentional,

systematic attempt to hide information from Congress. I’d like to

introduce that letter into the record.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mrs. MALONEY. I’d like to thank the chairman, and I would also

like to put into the record, since at times this issue has been called

partisan, and regrettably sometimes it has been partisan in our

comments—so, therefore, to bring the debate above a partisan

level, I would like to introduce into the record all of the editorials

from across this country in support of the Census Bureau’s plans,

in support of the use of modern scientific methods to correct the

undercount, and it comes from the Miami Herald, the Houston

Chronicle, newspapers all across this country.

Mr. MILLER. I think we’ve already accepted that.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney follows:]

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Mr. MILLER. Mr. Ryan.

Mr. Ryan, before you begin, you mentioned the editorials. There’s

some very large number of editorials opposed to the concept of statistical adjustment and manipulation, and I ask consent that we

enter those in the record, and without objection, those editorials

will be included.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. MILLER. I am glad you talk about getting away from the partisanship, but it’s something you make a statement and it really

bothers me to set claims, Mrs. Maloney, that we don’t want to

count people. This Congress has provided every penny and provided all the resources the Bureau has asked to get everybody

counted. That is our objective, that is our goal; and we are not trying to not count people, and to say that is just political rhetoric.

So I just want to make sure we clear the record.

Let me clear one other record and that is the question about scientific endorsement. The National Academy of Sciences panel to review the 2000 census has not endorsed the ACE. I had a long meeting with Janet Norwood only 2 days ago, and she emphatically

stated several times that neither she nor any member of the panel

has made any determination as to the quality or outcome of the

ACE. She explained what is quite obvious to most people, that you

can’t evaluate a statistical process if, one, it’s not complete and,

two, you don’t have the data. So please stop misrepresenting the

truth here. The ACE is a statistical plan, but at the moment it is

mostly just that, a plan.

Mr. Ryan.

Mr. RYAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, let me followup on this. We are going into that

touchy part of the census where I think we have done very remarkable accomplishments in the enumeration process, and I’m excited

about hearing more about how well the enumeration is working,

but now we are getting into that touchy area and now we are hearing the kinds of discussions, the kind of political rhetoric that is

unfortunate.

First of all, it’s not all Democrats against all Republicans. Democrats in my home State of Wisconsin are against sampling because

they know it is not good for the State of Wisconsin. So I object to

the characterization that opposition to the ACE plan means opposition to counting people. The same people who oppose the ACE plan,

the chairman and myself, are the same people who have provided

$7 billion to improve the census, especially in the traditionally

undercounted areas and communities in the inner cities, $7 billion

provided for advertising, $7 billion provided for partnership, hiring

that far exceeded any previous census. So saying that the people

who provided these resources don’t want the people to be counted

is wrong and is actually racially divisive.

Post-census local review, we passed that out of Congress. We

can’t get it signed into law. Post-census local review, in my opinion,

is a very good idea. It simply says in those hard-to-count areas, the

inner city of Milwaukee, the inner city of New York, please look at

the data, local, elected officials, tell us if we missed anybody. Did

we miss a public housing complex? Did we miss a neighborhood

that’s tough to reach? Did we miss a Latino neighborhood that

didn’t want to comply with the census? If so, we’ll go back and get

those people counted. That’s a very common-sense idea.

It’s a common-sense idea that was supported in 1990 by Democrats and Republicans alike. The mayor of Chicago, mayors all

across the country supported a common-sense idea like post-census

local review. We passed post-census local review to try and improve

the count, to try and make sure that those people who are historiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:01 May 21, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\71389.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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cally undercounted get counted, that local officials, mayors, county

board members, city council people, pastors in inner-city churches

get a chance to look at the data before it’s finalized to make sure

that their citizens weren’t missed. Well, this administration

blocked post-census local review. We don’t have post-census local

review.

LUCA was a good idea. LUCA worked well, but it can be improved upon. I still think we should do post-census local review. So

to suggest that those of us who have questions about the statistical

adjustment are somehow against getting the most accurate census

is a ridiculous claim, No. 1.

No. 2, the scientific community is clearly not unified on this

point, so also to suggest that the scientific community is completely

behind statistical sampling is not correct. I have a letter here from

the Statistics Department of the University of Berkeley in California, Dr. David Freeman and Kenny Walter. I ask unanimous consent that this letter be inserted into the record, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MILLER. Without objection.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. RYAN. Also, the National Academy of Sciences has not endorsed the ACE plan. So to suggest that the scientific community

believes that this is a unified point, that’s just not the case.

Sampling didn’t work in 1990. We found that years later we had

dire problems. So one thing that I think in today’s hearing, hopefully we can get into, is the compressed time line that this plan involves. I am concerned that this rushed time line is going to give

us the errors we will discover down the road when it’s too late.

So with that, Mr. Chairman, I’d like to yield back the balance of

my time. My friend from New York, the national academy of scientists hasn’t officially endorsed the ACE plan. The scientific community is divided on this. So I hope that we can move forward on

an even keel, on an objective basis; and I hope that we won’t get

into this heightened political rhetoric where we are impugning the

motives of each of the two parties involved.

All of us want an accurate count. All of us want everybody to be

counted in the neighborhoods where they live. Democrats and Republicans in Wisconsin want that. All of us want that. So let’s keep

the discussion at that level if we may.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. MALONEY. I request permission to respond. I think that I

should be able to respond.

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. I yield time, Mr. Chairman.

Mrs. MALONEY. Very briefly I feel that we should let the facts

speak for themselves, so I would like to put into the record the legislation, bipartisan, that went—that passed calling on the National

Academy of Sciences to come forward with a plan to correct the

undercount. The plan that they came back with, which was the use

of modern scientific methods, I would like to put into the record the

language that the Republican majority attached to the disaster relief bill that would have prohibited the use of modern scientific

methods. I would like to put into the record that the Republican

majority tried to attach to two budget bills, holding up two budgets,

that would have limited and prohibited the use of modern scientific

methods.

The facts speak for themselves, and I will put that in the record,

and it is clear—and it is clear what the intention of such actions

would do and how it would affect and continue an undercount.

Knowingly, the majority tried to stack the deck so that millions of

Americans would be intentionally left out of representation and

funding dollars in this country. It is unfair. It is unjust. It is the

civil rights issue of this decade.

Mr. RYAN. Will the gentlelady yield for an honest point of clarification—not a tit for tat, just an honest point of clarification?

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Reclaiming my time, I yield.

Mr. RYAN. Thank you, Danny. Appreciate it. That was 2 years

ago in the last Congress. That was then; this is now. Let’s move

forward with not a lot of political rhetoric. Let’s move forward and

debate this objectively, and let’s not impugn the motives of each

other. We all want an accurate count. With that, I yield.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, let

me thank you for convening this hearing regarding oversight of the

2000 census and the impact of the accuracy and coverage evaluaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:01 May 21, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\71389.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tion, that is, the ACE process. As enumerators begin the process

of going door-to-door to those households that did not send in their

census forms, it is important that we examine the ACE operations.

The ACE process was added to the 2000 census to replace the postenumeration survey of 1990 in an effort to improve the accuracy of

the census.

We all know that accuracy must be the goal. We can ill afford

to go back to the days of 1990 when too many people lost from an

inaccurate census. The constituents of my district, the Seventh

Congressional District in Illinois, deserve and need an accurate

count of the entire population. They realize that too much is at

stake to get a less-than-accurate count.

In 1990 Chicago lost millions of dollars in Federal funds because

of a census undercount. According to the Bureau, at least 10 people, including at least 113,831 in the State of Illinois, 81,000 in

Cook County and 68,000 in the city of Chicago were not counted

in the 1990 census. Many of those missed were obviously children

and women who live in minority communities. Because the 1990

census missed counting millions of people in Chicago, every one of

our residents were shortchanged on money to repair roads and

streets. They were shortchanged on money for mass transit and

senior citizen homes. They were shortchanged on money for

schools, parks and job training. Perhaps the most egregious shortchange was that of political representation, and in a democracy

representation is essential to having a voice in local, State and

Federal Government.

I represent many hard to count people. According to the Census

Bureau 165,000 of them live at or below the poverty level in my

district. I’m pleased that we’re holding these hearings in an effort

to make certain that the Census Bureau and others are doing everything possible to get an accurate count. Yes, many people are

indeed difficult to count. Therefore, we must use every effort to try

and make sure that the past evils and transgressions of our Nation

do not continue to negatively impact upon the reality of our being,

and if there is to be fairness, we must indeed make use of every

method available to us.

Just 2 days ago the mayor of my city, Mayor Daley announced

a $400,000 radio and television advertising campaign to be funded

by the city to encourage people to cooperate and participate in the

2000 census. This advertising campaign coupled with what the

Census Bureau has already committed to will go a long way toward

a more accurate census. However, I tell you that you cannot undo

with radio and television ads what 400 years of slavery, deprivation, discrimination, denial of equal opportunity, lack of opportunity to be educated, to understand, to be a part of the mainstream, you cannot undo that with radio, television and newspaper

advertising. You cannot even undo it by sending people door to

door, looking for people that you cannot find, people who in many

instances are unreachable, untouchable and unfindable, and I don’t

care how much we put in, unless we make absolutely certain that

every available technique, every scientific advancement, every opportunity exists to count every single person, account for every single person in this country, then we once again will come up lacking. Once again, individuals will be left out. Once again, individVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:01 May 21, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\71389.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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uals will be shortchanged and once again, this Nation will have

shortchanged itself.

So, Mr. Chairman, I am pleased that we’re having this hearing

and look forward to the information that Dr. Prewitt will share

with us. So I thank you and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Davis. You do outline the real challenges of this massive undertaking that we’re in the process of. Dr.

Prewitt, if you and Mr. Hogan and Mr. Thompson would stand and

raise your right hands, we’ll get you sworn in and proceed, in case

Mr. Thompson and Mr. Hogan is needed to assist you.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. MILLER. Thank you and please be seated. The record will reflect that Mr. Thompson, Dr. Hogan, Dr. Prewitt answered in the

affirmative. Welcome. Thank you. You may proceed with the opening statement.

STATEMENT OF KENNETH PREWITT, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF

THE CENSUS, ACCOMPANIED BY JOHN H. THOMPSON, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR DECENNIAL CENSUS; AND HOWARD

HOGAN, STATISTICIAN, CHIEF, DECENNIAL STATISTICAL

STUDIES DIVISION

Mr. PREWITT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I did solicit the

chairman’s permission this morning to spend just a few minutes returning to the e-mail incident that was addressed last week at the

subcommittee hearing with the GAO, and I have also informed the

minority and also the leader and also Mr. Davis and Mr. Ryan that

I would like to address that quickly.

I’d like to start by saying that it is understandable that in the

absence of facts the offending sentence instructing the LCO managers not to share a given report with the GAO could have led to

the strong reaction of the chairman, of Congressman Ryan and of

Mr. Mihm of the GAO. But the facts do in fact mitigate this reaction and I would like to quickly put them in the record, and here

I paraphrase from a subsequent e-mail by Mr. Rodriguez, who was

the author of that initial e-mail.

The report in question, he explains is, a regional level report and

information from it should be shared only by the regional level. It

in turn generates local office reports, and it is this information that

can be shared by local managers. As he writes in a subsequent email to us, that, as per our instructions on May 8th at about 3

p.m., the report, the offending report—not the offending report but

the one that initiated the incident—was to be shared at the area

manager’s discretion with their local census office but any one local

census office was not to share the production information of a different LCO; that is, each LCO was only to share its own information and not other patterns of information. If anyone outside the

Census Bureau wanted to obtain a regional level report, they can

get that from the regional census center, and then he goes on to

explain why he sent the report he did: ‘‘My intentions were to provide the report to my offices as a tool to encourage friendly competition and thereby productivity, nothing more. I regret that my

intentions have been misinterpreted and rightly so because of the

way my e-mail was worded, and I apologize for any inconvenience

I may have caused.’’

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I would like to say, Mr. Chairman, that obviously I join in that

apology but nevertheless do want to make certain that we understand that the facts themselves give no warrant for the accusation

that the Census Bureau is preventing the GAO from discharging

its responsibilities.

Mr. Chairman, we have taken this accusation so seriously that

yesterday with Deputy Director William Barron I met with David

Walker, the Comptroller General, with Nancy Kingsbury and with

Chris Mihm to reiterate the Census Bureau policy in regard to access, and I do believe that we all fully understand that there’s

nothing in our policies that are designed to prevent any access by

the GAO.

Mr. Chairman, more than a week ago at the subcommittee hearing to which I’ve referred, you said that there were Census Bureau

employees, ‘‘in very influential positions who are dangerous.’’ This

I take as a very serious charge. If substantiated, I would take corrective action. Obviously if I am, myself, the person who is dangerous, then I would expect you to bring that to the attention of

the Secretary and he would take corrective action.

In that same hearing, you asked the GAO to investigate the incident that led you to make this extremely serious charge. Yesterday

I asked David Walker, Comptroller General of the GAO, if his organization had any evidence that would corroborate your charge that

the Census Bureau has people in very influential positions who are

dangerous. He replied in the negative, and in this he was seconded

by Christopher Mihm, who also was present at the meeting.

Mr. Chairman, it is now more than a week after your charge. I

know that you and your staff had conducted your own independent

investigation, and I wait for the evidence on which this accusation

is based, for I am unable to take corrective action until I know who

these people are and what it is that makes them dangerous. So

may I respectfully request that you please provide me, as soon as

possible, the names of the dangerous people, the nature of the danger they pose and of course the evidence that would substantiate

this charge, and I promise to you that I will take corrective action.

Thank you, sir.

Now, if I may, I’ll turn to my opening comments on the topic of

this hearing.

Census 2000 operations continue on track and on budget. I earlier reported that the mail-back response rate at 66 percent was

very encouraging, and in my written testimony I indicated that we

had completed 39 percent of the nonresponse followup workload. I

would like to update that number through yesterday. The workload

is now 50 percent complete. Putting these two numbers together,

the census enumeration is now approximately 85 percent complete.

That is, 85 percent of the housing units have now responded or we

have identified them as vacants.

Still, the Census Bureau does not anticipate at this point that

census 2000 will have better coverage than the 1990 census because many of the factors that led to the undercount in 1990 are

still present in American society, and indeed, as a proportion of the

population have grown—more gated communities, more recent immigrants, more linguistically isolated households, more persons livVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:01 May 21, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\71389.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing in irregular housing and perhaps more anger toward the government.

The Census Bureau has both measured and documented the existence of a substantial undercount since 1940, and this has already been referenced in the opening comments. The Census Bureau has been running harder but believes this will only allow us

to stay even. That is, we expect that neither the overall coverage

levels nor the differential undercount rates in census 2000 will

show improvement over 1990. The Census Bureau strongly hopes

to be proven wrong in this assessment, and the ACE will give us

the information to determine whether this is so.

The ACE provides a final quality check on how well we have

done in the initial census. The alternative is not to do the ACE and

never know how we have done below the national level where demographic analysis does provide a benchmark. The ACE also provides the means to generate a more accurate count.

The 1990 version of the ACE, or the accuracy and coverage evaluation, was called the post-enumeration survey. It provided information that was used during the 1990’s to improve statistical programs. The population estimates the Bureau of Labor Statistics

asked us to incorporate into the current population survey program

following the 1990 census were corrected for the undercount identified through the 1990 PES. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also requested adjusted population controls for the consumer expenditure

survey. All other major national demographic surveys conducted by

the Census Bureau or other agencies in the Federal statistical system also were converted to this adjusted population base. And

Katherine Abraham, the current Commissioner, of course testifies

that in the absence of this correction their published demographic

distribution of unemployment and other measures would have been

inaccurate.

We believe we have an obligation to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the many, many other users of our data products to make

our data as accurate as possible. I have said previously that the

Census Bureau currently expects that the corrected numbers using

the accuracy and coverage evaluation will be the more accurate

numbers. If the Census Bureau does not have confidence in the results, we will not use them. The decision whether to release the

statistically corrected data should take into consideration operational data to validate the successful conduct of the ACE, whether

the ACE measurements of undercount are consistent with historical patterns of undercount and a review of selected measures of

quality.

In the fall of this year the Census Bureau will discuss the review

process and criteria with the statistical community and other interested parties. We will set forth how we will assess whether our

operational functions for the ACE were met. All major operations

have been designed and documented and the details have been

available for review and comment. Every document requested by

the subcommittee has been forwarded. Here, however, Mr. Chairman, is a complete set. It is possible there are documents here that

you have not yet requested, but we can provide you the entire complete set of our decision documents that go into the design of the

ACE.

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Now, let me very quickly try to describe the operations as requested in your invitation letter. Several major operations have

now been completed. One is ongoing and others will follow the completion of nonresponse followup. All operations are currently on

schedule.

The basic concept behind the ACE is the comparison of the data

from two systems, an independent survey and the initial census.

Because of its small size relative to the initial census, we believe

we can do a better job enumerating people in the housing units in

a sample. We can be more selective about the interviewers, train

them longer, pay them more and provide more quality assurance.

The first step in the ACE process is to design and select a sample

which consists of approximately 314,000 housing units or about

one-fourth of 1 percent of the total housing units. The basic units

of this sample are what we call block clusters, and there will be

about 11,800 block clusters in our sample. The sample was designed and selected to provide sufficient precision to estimate the

true population for various groupings of the population that we call

post-strata which I will describe below.

The next step in the process is to create an independent listing

of housing units. By independent we mean that we do not start

with or refer to the master address file from census 2000 but instead have census staff systematically canvass the block clusters to

list the addresses. This operation was completed in the fall of 1999,

checked and keyed and 100 percent quality controlled in our national processing center.

The Census Bureau then matches this list of housing units to the

master address file, first by computer and then clerically if necessary, using this additional information, we continue to improve

our address list. The purpose of this housing unit match is to create an accurate linked list of housing units in the block clusters.

This work was also completed on schedule.

To provide sufficient data to compare the ACE to the initial census the Census Bureau of course must conduct interviews to collect

data from each of the housing units that were independently listed.

We initiated the ACE interviewing with a telephone phase using

laptop computers in a technique we call computer assisted personal

interviewing. This is the laptop computer that we’re using that in

that procedure, and we would be delighted, of course, to provide a

staff briefing of how it is used.

We began in late April telephoning households in the ACE sample at unique addresses for which a census 2000 questionnaire had

been mailed back, processed through data capture and for which a

telephone number was provided. As of today we have completed

over 60,000 interviews by telephone, more than 20 percent of our

workload for the ACE. In addition to getting an early start on

interviewing, the benefits include providing experience for our supervisors and a final testing of our automated system. The Bureau,

of course, has had extensive experience with telephone interviewing. We designed this phase of the ACE based upon our testing of

the methodology in the dress rehearsal.

As you know, we do not begin personal visit interviewing until

nearly all nonresponse followup work is completed in all the ACE

block clusters in an LCO. This is one of the ways we preserve indeVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:01 May 21, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\71389.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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pendence between the ACE and the census. If nonresponse followup and ACE, field interviews are working the same areas simultaneously, they could affect each other’s work, and that’s why we

wait to complete nonresponse followup before starting the personal

visits.

Interviewers, whether on the telephone or personal visit, focus on

reconstructing the Census Day household; that is, determining who

lived at the address on Census Day at the time of the ACE interview and collecting as much information as possible for those who

lived at the address on Census Day but have moved out, so we also

have special procedures, of course, for movers.

All of these interviewers will use the CAPI technique. This is a

technique that improves the accuracy of the operation because it

permits a more structured interview and more probing questions.

We have extensive processes for conducting quality assurance to

identify data quality or falsification problems, though for data quality purposes we do not widely publicize these processes. Most personal visit interviewing will be conducted in late July or August,

but some may begin in mid-to-late June. Personal visit interviews

are conducted only with a household member during the first 3

weeks if the case is available. If an interview is not obtained after

3 weeks, interviewers will attempt to interview another knowledgeable person, and during this latter part we use our very best interviewers of course who are trained to convert reluctant respondents.

We then do person matching. This will occur in October and November. Census Bureau staff conduct the various stages of the

matching of persons listed in the ACE interviewing to those persons counted in the same block clusters as part of the initial census, and we have designed, of course, these matching processes to

minimize errors. Incorrect matching determinations generally result from incomplete, inaccurate or conflicting data or from poor

judgment, and so we have several stages at which we conduct this

matching process each with its own quality assurance process.

We then turn to dual system estimation. We use data from the

ACE and the census to estimate the true population using a statistical technique called dual system estimation. The DSE will be conducted for each of over 400 groupings of people or post-strata. The

dual system estimator of true population is then used to calculate

a coverage correction factor for each post-stratum, which is the

ratio of the DSE to the initial census count. The variables that define the post-strata grouping include race, ethnicity, age, sex,

owner and nonowner, return rates, whether in or out of a metropolitan area and, if in, the size of the area, the type of census enumeration method.

These are characteristics that our research indicates are correlated with a likelihood of inclusion in the census. An example of

one post-stratum is non-Hispanic Black males age 18 to 29 in nonowner units in mail-out mail-back areas of metropolitan areas with

500,000 or more people in a tract with a low return rate in the census.

Coverage correction factors are then applied the census files. For

example, if the coverage correction factor for a non-Hispanic Black

male in the specific post-stratum described above is 1.02, this

means the Census Bureau measured an undercount of 2 percent for

34

this post-stratum and for every 100 people counted in the census

in these areas two records will be added. This process is sometimes

called synthetic estimation. After this, the corrected census file can

be used to produce the corrected tabulation for all uses of census

data.

Mr. Chairman, I have tried to give a rather simple and quick

basic description of the ACE and the documents listed in the appendix, and, of course, this fuller set of documents can be investigated for any more detailed questions that you might have.

Thank you sir.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Prewitt follows:]

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Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Director Prewitt. I’m not going to enter

all that in the record. It will make it too long and lengthy. So I

will appreciate having the access to that. Let me briefly make a

comment about the issue of transparency and openness, and I hope

like you that we get beyond this very quickly.

However, let me just explain the foundation for my concerns.

Issues of transparency and access go right to the heart of one of

the reasons of why I called this hearing today. The census is like

a business placing an order. Last year the Congress placed a $7 billion order with the Census Bureau. This Congress had done everything it can to make sure we had the money to pay. Now the inventory is coming in, and I am equally responsible to those Senators

and Representatives and the people they represent to make sure

we get what we paid for. It’s my job to check the inventory.

It’s also the job of the GAO, the monitoring board and the Inspector General and the National Academy of Sciences to review

the 2000 census. Unfortunately, when I tried to check the inventory, the Bureau tells me I can’t open certain boxes or I have got

to wait 3 weeks while they check with headquarters or there are

some boxes that are off limits. Let me give you a few examples.

Last year the Bureau refused to provide this subcommittee with

data from the 1990 census. They claimed it was protected by title

13 and it wasn’t. And we are all sworn anyway, but the result was

to delay the request for months.

The Bureau also delayed providing information requested for the

dress rehearsal for an entire year, effectively preventing analysis.

Two months ago, I entered into the record a list of information requested by the monitoring board that were delayed by more than

60 days or refused. The Bureau also produced a set of guidelines

that limited access to local offices by the GAO, the board and the

subcommittee. And just last week we received a copy of an e-mail

that gave me, my staff and representatives of the GAO reason to

believe a Bureau employee was instructed to withhold information

and was instructing subordinates to do the same.

This week I received a letter from the Director requesting that

I not call any Bureau employees without a Democratic staffer or a

member of the Bureau present. Is this what is meant by transparent census free from political manipulation? If this is the routine during the relatively simple census, delayed information, limited access and obstructed investigations, how can we have confidence in the extremely complex statistical adjustment?

How can we honestly say this process is free from political manipulation if we are not allowed to review the process, or if we are

only allowed to look at certain parts of it under certain conditions

with proper supervision of Democrats and Bureau employees?

These developments are increasingly troubling and do not add to

the credibility of this or future decennial censuses.

My comments certainly do not reflect on you, Director Prewitt,

and I think the people behind you. The nature of the concern is

there is a contempt for Congress and the responsibility that we

have, as the elected officials have for overseeing, not only want the

$7 billion of the census, but the critical role the census is for our

entire electoral process.

43

It is rare that we have a copy of an e-mail like that and it is legitimate for us to be looking at that.

Let me make another comment about the use of the PES and the

BLS adjusted numbers. My understanding is that the BLS accepted

adjusted numbers for very large areas, national populations, and

for large States. But you are proposing releasing adjusted numbers

for every State, county, city, and block in the country. That is a

completely different use of the numbers than what BLS is using.

At small levels of geography, adjusted numbers are not reliable,

and in fact the Census Bureau doesn’t use the adjusted numbers.

Which raises a question of I see in your statement instead of using

‘‘adjusted’’ numbers you started using ‘‘corrected’’ numbers, which

implies that you have already decided that the adjustments are the

correct ones, which to me almost politicizes the use of that word.

So I am concerned that you start saying, well, this is the corrected

one. You have obviously made a decision—not obviously but apparently instead of calling it adjusted numbers you are using corrected

numbers and that is a political way to refer to those numbers.

Dr. Bryant, the Director of the Census Bureau in 1990, originally

supported adjusting the national numbers. But she decided not to

adjust the intercensual estimates after extensive evaluation by the

CAPE Committee showed the 1990 adjustment was 45 percent

error. Let me read from her decision, this is from the CAPE report:

‘‘Work suggests, the CAPE committee’s work suggests that no survey, either the high quality, well-controlled and interviewed 1990

PES of 170,000 households or a larger one can be used to make a

post census fine-tuning of an average undercount as small as 1.6

percent in all types of places, counties, and States. Given that,

from little or no evidence that adjustment would improve the quality of sub-state estimates other than for a limited number of large

places, the decision is not to adjust.’’ This is from the December 1992 Federal Register, which I would

like to enter into the record, and without objection it will be included in the record.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. MILLER. Director Prewitt, if you plan to release adjusted

numbers at block level, please be prepared to defend the accuracy

at that level. Don’t tell me that because some agencies have elected

to use adjusted numbers at the national level we should adjust the

population for all 6 million blocks across the country.

A part of your statistical design hinges on using race, age and

other characteristics to characterize people on what you call poststrata. For example, one category would be Asian women living in

small metropolitan areas, age 30 to 49, renting their living space.

And while the exact number has changed several times, I believe

the current design is made up of 448 such categories; is that correct?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. MILLER. In these post-strata or profiles, when you say Asian,

do you make distinctions between Japanese, Chinese, Laotians, Koreans or other Asian cultures?

Mr. PREWITT. No, sir.

Mr. MILLER. Do you make a distinction between Japanese, Chinese, Laotian, Koreans or others, or is it all just Asian?

Mr. PREWITT. It’s all Asian.

Mr. MILLER. On Hispanics, do you lump confidential Cuban

Americans, Puerto Rican Americans and Mexican-Americans?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. MILLER. And they are all Hispanics?

Mr. PREWITT. They’re all Hispanic.

Mr. MILLER. And so the assumption is they all respond in a similar manner?

Mr. PREWITT. Correct. That is the assumption, yes, they have

similar capture probabilities, is how we would put it.

Mr. MILLER. Well—so, the Cubans in Miami, the Puerto Ricans

in New York, the Hispanics in Houston or Los Angeles all have the

same characteristic response rates? Guatemalans, Hondurans in

Miami, they all have the same as the Cubans? I find that hard to

understand and grasp.

I think if you talked to the Cubans in Miami or the Mexicans in

Los Angeles, they may not totally agree with that, that they are

all homogeneous as you assume.

Mr. PREWITT. No, I said they all have the same capture probability, which is to say the chances of enumerating them in the

basic census are roughly similar. Now, let us make certain that we

understand that we’re not just talking about Cubans or Hispanics,

we are also talking about 17 or 16 other sets of characteristics. Do

they own? Do they rent? What is their age? What is their gender?

So it is not simply the ethnic or racial characteristics. It is a cluster

of characteristics that create a post-stratum.

Mr. MILLER. As I understand, the post-strata design adjustments

for various categories will be applied the same way across the entire Nation. For example, Hispanic men age 18 to 29 in large cities

in rental housing in areas with high mail return rates. As I read

that, it sounds like as long as they fit that description, Cubans living in Tampa will get the same adjustment as Mexicans living in

Houston and Puerto Ricans living in New York and so on across

the country. That is correct?

65

Mr. PREWITT. Yeah, it turns out they have very similar capture

probabilities. That is why it is correct.

Mr. MILLER. Let me ask you about Puerto Rico. You have 84

post-strata classifications for Puerto Rico; is that right? For Puerto

Rico, you have 84?

Mr. PREWITT. Checking.

Mr. MILLER. OK. OK. My understanding is there was 84. Does

Puerto Rico have the separate strata but Texas, Chicago, California

and New York are treated separately? How is that? Why don’t we

have separate classifications of post-strata for Texas, California,

Chicago or New York City, but we have all of these strata classifications for Puerto Rico? Why is Puerto Rico singled out? I mean,

they are all Hispanic or most all Hispanic. But then—— Mr. PREWITT. Before we turn to Puerto Rico, let me address the

first part of your question. Can I just go back a bit? You have

asked a large number of questions to get to this very particular

one. And I don’t want to readdress all the access questions, but I

do think that nearly every one of those things that you mentioned

in your response on the access question have been answered before

and continue to be answered. We talked about a terrabyte of information, 52 million yellow pages worth of information. We have met

repeatedly with the GAO and the monitoring board. There are no

access questions, there are no transparency questions that I know

to be on the table right now, sir.

And you chide us about having guidelines. On the other hand,

you were the one who asked me in a hearing to please create some

guidelines so that we could all sort of understand and move forward in this census without disrupting it. So I find it a little odd

that now we try to have some guidelines and we are chided for

that. So it is kind of either way.

Mr. MILLER. It is interesting that you have given me guidelines

on my behavior. I mean, my letter that you received the other day

is that you are telling me who I can call and who can be present

in a phone call. I’m the elected representative of the people.

Mr. PREWITT. Of course, you can do whatever you want and will

do whatever you want. We then get pressure from the minority

wanting to make exactly the same calls. I don’t know, I don’t know

whether you want to call 100 people and put them on tape, or 10

people, or 200 people.

And we’re just trying to sort of manage the process right now.

We’re trying to finish the census. It seems kind of reasonable to us

to say, if possible, let’s try to coordinate these phone calls. But no,

you can call anyone you want to in the country. We will give you

the phone numbers of 500,000 employees.

Mr. MILLER. By the way, it was very easy to locate the gentleman in question and he was a very pleasant call.

Mr. PREWITT. I am also very pleased that you made reference to

the fact this is a rare e-mail. Of course it is rare. That is why you

had to pay such attention to it because there is not a pattern of

such e-mails.

But back to the ACE. You said in your opening comments that

the Bureau of Labor Statistics used the data at the national level

and State level and substate levels, but primarily you are absolutely correct. I would just like to make certain that you underVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:01 May 21, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\71389.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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stand that the Census Bureau believes that local area data are unstable irrespective of whether they are corrected or not.

We think that the apportionment number, which is based upon

the basic enumeration, is unstable at the local level. We don’t have

a whole lot of confidence in block level data, period, however they

are collected, because it is the nature of very small area data that

that is where errors can get magnified.

So we are just as worried about block level data preadjusted or

precorrected as we are post adjusted and post corrected. It is just

a fact of the nature of statistical operations.

So when you say that we have to be absolutely correct at the

local level, we would—if that were the standard, we would not be

able to give this country the redistricting data based upon the initial census, because we couldn’t stand behind that data at every

local level. We just couldn’t do it. So it is not an issue of whether

it is adjusted or unadjusted——

Mr. MILLER. Which is more correct—which is more accurate at

the block level, the actual count or the adjusted, or you want to call

it the corrected number at the block level? Which is more accurate?

Mr. PREWITT. Oh, undoubtedly the adjusted number is more accurate across——

Mr. MILLER. At the block level?

Mr. PREWITT. Oh, yes, absolutely. At the block level we are missing—we know in certain blocks in Chicago, heavily comprised of African-Americans who rent their housing who are young males,

we’re missing a large number of them.

Mr. MILLER. You have already decided then that the adjustment

is going forward and that is going to be more accurate, the adjusted

numbers at the block level. Why did the Census Bureau not use

the adjusted numbers for the intercensual estimates? Why did the

BLS use it only for the national numbers or very large State numbers and not for—and we have all used the unadjusted numbers?

Now you are saying it is more accurate or corrected, the political

term you are using.

Mr. PREWITT. I am sorry that you are concerned about that. We

use the word ‘‘adjusted’’ and ‘‘corrected’’ interchangeably.

Mr. MILLER. ‘‘Corrected’’ is a new use of the word, I think. You

have been using ‘‘adjusted,’’ and I think that is more appropriate.

Mr. PREWITT. Well, I have been using the word ‘‘corrected’’ since

I got here. I am happy to use the set of terms you want. They are

interchangeable as far as we are concerned.

The decision has not been made, sir. The decision that has been

made is to proceed with the ACE procedure. And indeed, as I said,

we are now over 20 percent finished with the collection of the data.

We have theoretical reasons for believing that this will produce

more accurate numbers. We also have to test the operations. Your

concern about whether this is a spaceship to Mars that may blow

up is an understandable concern. That is also true of the census.

It is also true of the enumeration. Any one of our operations could

have blown up. We are very pleased that we are now about 85 percent finished with the census and it hasn’t blown up. And we’ve

had many, many hearings about why that is so. We are really very

pleased with the operational robustness of this census.

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But it is not in the nature of one operation versus another operation that it can turn into difficulties. Any operation will run into

difficulties, including the new operation—not a new, but an operation that we have not talked about in this subcommittee called

coverage improvement followup, which is going to have 71⁄2 million

households in it. We have not done that one yet. It may not work

well. If it doesn’t work well, that will have an impact upon the

quality of the apportionment numbers.

So it is not something special with the ACE which makes it vulnerable. Any big complex field operation is vulnerable. The good

news is we’re 85 percent finished with the census without having

had one. We still have 15 percent to go and it is a very, very hard

15 percent because we are now down to the difficult cases.

So we have made the decision that based upon statistical theory,

capture-recapture technologies are able to improve a basic count.

That’s the decision that we have made and we have designed an

operation to do that.

Mr. MILLER. Well, I think we are all pleased that the full enumeration is proceeding as it is. I think from the mail response rates

to the nonresponse followup is proceeding apparently ahead of

schedule. And that is the positive thing.

But ACE, there is legitimate differences within the statistical

community, as you are well aware of, and to say that this is already going to be the corrected number, and the other one is an

incorrect number by inference—when you say one is correct that

means the other one is incorrect—is politicizing the process, and

that is unfortunate.

Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much. I feel that the chairman

often will invoke a person’s name who is not here and use it as evidence and they’re not here to speak for themselves. He did it last

week with Mr. Rodriguez, a Marine, the civil servant, the young

man who was working in the census office. He wasn’t here to speak

for himself. Now we have his written letters. We know what he

said. But earlier he mentioned the names of Dr. Barbara Bryant,

the Census Director under former President Bush, and let’s have

her come here and speak for herself on how she feels about modern

scientific methods.

And he mentioned the name of Dr. Janet Norwood and his conversation with Dr. Janet Norwood from the National Academy of

Sciences, implying that she did not support the plan of the agency.

Well, may I suggest, respectfully, that we invite Dr. Norwood to

come and speak for herself. I have a May 3rd, 1999, letter from Dr.

Norwood that I would like to put in the record that appears to indicate that she supports the plan of the agency, ‘‘In general, the

panel concludes that the ACE design work to date is well-considered. It represents good, current practice in both sample design and

post design as well as the interrelationship of the two.’’ And I’d like

to put that in the record.

So very respectfully, I suggest that we have these people come

and enter their own testimony as opposed to an interpretation by

the chairman.

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And I would like to ask you, Dr. Prewitt, have you had any conversations with Dr. Norwood? And what is your interpretation to

date on her support of the agency’s plan?

Mr. PREWITT. Well, Dr. Norwood is of course the chairman of the

standing committee now of the National Academy of Sciences that

is looking over all of our plans for the accuracy and coverage evaluation as well as the basic census, so obviously I go to all of their

meetings that are publicly open. I am frequently asked to testify

or to present materials before that committee, so yes, I have attended every one of the meetings of this committee and have had

conversations with Ms. Norwood in that context.

I believe that to try to get the facts exactly on the table, the letter to which you refer, which is of course over a year old, written

May 3, 1999, was based upon the degree of work that had been

done to that date, and there has been a lot more work done on the

ACE design since that date. And that’s what is represented by this

stack. That is—the size of the stack about a year ago would have

been, you know, a quarter to a fifth of this size because we hadn’t

done a lot of the technical work then. So based upon the technical

work that had been done, which was the early sampling design this

is the judgment that the committee wrote in that letter of May 3rd.

I think it is correct to say that the National Academy committee

has not, ‘‘signed off on’’ the full design because they haven’t met

since the full design has been completed. There are now 106 major

decisions that have to be made with respect to the ACE design; 104

of those have been made. The two which have not been made have

to do with weight trimming methodology, and varience estimation,

the specific criteria for weight trimming methodology. And under

variance estimation we haven’t fully finished talking through technically the specific criteria for incorporating controlled rounding

into generalized variance estimation. Those are the only 2 out of

106 major decisions that have not yet been completed.

You know, we’re talking about those all the time right now. In

the next couple of weeks we will have resolved those. We will put

them in a piece of paper and they will join this stack and they will

be sent to this subcommittee if they want them and also to the National Academy.

So I think it is fair to say that they haven’t, ‘‘signed off on’’ the

final design because no one could have. The final design did not

exist on May 3rd nor indeed, as of yesterday whenever the chairman talked to Ms. Norwood it did not exist. So I think the National

Academy committee has been extremely useful to us, looking at our

work, judging it, passing back suggestions and recommendations to

us, holding public events. They had a major public event on the design earlier this year and another one is scheduled for September.

So we don’t expect them to have signed off on a design that has

not yet been completed. I think the chairman is quite correct. They

need to see it and they will see it as soon as it is completely finished, and we are very close to having it completely finished.

Mrs. MALONEY. Dr. Prewitt, a number of people have suggested

that the use of statistical methods to correct errors in a census

opens the process to political manipulation. Would you please explain to us whether or not you believe that to be true, and what

can be done to assure the public that no such manipulation occurs?

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Mr. PREWITT. Well, needless to say, there are few charges that

bother the Census Bureau as much as that one does. To my knowledge, the decision memo by Secretary Mosbacher in 1991 was the

first time a senior official of the U.S. Government ever put on

record the possibility that the Census Bureau could design a procedure in anticipation of it having a given partisan outcome. And

what he said is that the political outcome of a choice, that is of a

statistical procedure, can be known in advance. He says: ‘‘I’m confident that political considerations played no role in the Census Bureau’s choice of an adjustment model for the 1990 census. I am

deeply concerned, however, that adjustment could open the door to

political tampering with the census in the future.’’ This put on record the idea that the Census Bureau could design

something having a known partisan outcome. Let me just say that

this strikes me as ludicrous on the face of it. The Census Bureau

does not have the competence to predetermine partisan outcomes.

It has no statistical expertise in reapportionment or redistricting,

no expertise on trends in voting behavior. To predetermine partisan outcomes the Census Bureau would need to bring to bear

such expertise when it selected data collection methodologies several years in advance of when the census counts are actually to be

used for reapportionment or redistricting.

It is simply way beyond the Census Bureau’s competence or capacity. Even if the Census Bureau intended to do it, it would not

know how to do it. It doesn’t have the competence, it does not have

the interest, and it certainly does not have the professional position

that that is what this job is.

I would like to point out that there are a large number of oversight agencies—this subcommittee, the Congressional Monitoring

Board, the Inspector General—and there are some several dozen

reporters who follow the census very closely. There are public

watchdog organizations. There are National Academy committees.

There are a large number of people who, if they could find partisan

manipulation of this census, would be the first to report it. And I

can only say we are now getting toward the end of the census and

no such incidence has ever been revealed. Where is the evidence

that the Census Bureau is designing things to have a partisan outcome? What kind of capacity would we have to have? We don’t have

it. We wouldn’t know how to do it. We don’t care about it. We don’t

pay any attention to redistricting data or voter trend data or what

Governor controls what State. We don’t pay any attention to that

stuff, because we’re actually trying to do a census and that is the

kind of capacity we have.

So I just think the charge that the Census Bureau itself has a

partisan agenda should be dismissed. I invite the Congressional

Monitoring Board to try to determine this and find it and reveal

it. I begged the cochairmen to have a hearing just on this issue,

and they have not yet done it.

So I just find that concerning this charge that was put in the

books 10 years ago, almost 10 years ago, there has never been any

evidence put on the table. I just wish someone would put the evidence on the table so we could answer it.

Mrs. MALONEY. I’d like to ask an operational question on a nonACE topic. You stated today that the Bureau had completed 50

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percent of the nonresponse followup, and that sounds remarkably

good at this point. Are you ahead of schedule, behind schedule?

Could you comment on this number and exactly where are you?

Mr. PREWITT. Well, we are always cautious, of course. Choosing

my words carefully, we are not displeased to be at 50 percent. On

the other hand, the hard cases are yet before us. We are now running into gated communities, a much higher density of gated communities, where we are having a very difficult time getting past

the doorman. And yet we know we have a low response rate from

those areas. We are certainly now running into the difficult cases

in the inner city and the African-American population that Congressman Davis just referred to. We are in the difficult cases in the

immigrant populations.

So to say that we are 50 percent where we need to be is, indeed,

good news. And as I say, when you put that together with the mailout, we are about 85 percent finished with the census. But we are

now down to the hard cases and as I have said in my written testimony and I have said many, many times, at the end of the day,

we will not get everyone. We would love to be proven wrong, but

we have had too many people already say I will not answer this

or I don’t care what you say, you can put me in jail—I have given

you some of that evidence before—so we will not be able to get everyone in the census.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you. Mr. Ryan, if you will let me make one

comment first, and that is the question on the political manipulation of the census. I would like to insert in the record the Supreme

Court decision concurring that Justice Scalia said, and he used the

phrase that an estimation was more likely to be politically manipulated than the full count.

The Supreme Court is even saying that there is a difference of

potential political manipulation. And I would also like to include in

the record the CRS report on adjustment, because the CRS said,

as I said in my statement, that the Supreme Court ruling precluded the use of sampled data for redistricting. Use of money and

other things is a different issue. But for purposes of redistricting,

it did not rule that it was illegal.

So with that, and with the inclusion of those, without objection

I am including both of those statements, Mr. Ryan.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. RYAN. Dr. Prewitt, let me start with a couple of questions

and then I would like to—I guess we are getting down to this issue,

the politicizing this thing. Have you made the final decision to adjust the census numbers according to the result of the ACE? You

have made that final decision; correct?

Mr. PREWITT. No, sir, we will not make that final decision until

February, March 2001.

Mr. RYAN. In your written testimony, you indicate that you

would not release the adjusted numbers if they did not meet the

Bureau’s standards of accuracy, and you said a review of the ACE,

quote, should take into consideration a review of selected measures

of quality.

Specifically what are our measures of quality and when were

they established?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir, that is indeed the topic of our next meeting with the National Academy of Sciences. We’re working these

through right now. We are presenting these publically well before

we make the decision in September. Can I give you one example?

Mr. RYAN. Sure.

Mr. PREWITT. Let us say we get the results back from the accuracy and coverage evaluation and we have a higher than expected

undercount in inner cities of the White population which owns its

own home. That is something we don’t expect. Well, it may well be

since 1990 to 2000 there has been a lot of gentrification and a lot

of this gentrification is now in gated communities and these people

are not returning their questionnaires and we get an unexpected

undercount in a population group where we did not expect it.

When we get that pattern, what we will do is say can we explain

it? If it is a pattern we can’t explain, it will make us nervous and

we will have to figure it out. If we can explain it because there are

now more gated communities in inner cities that happen to be

owned and inhabited by Whites who normally give us answers to

this, we will say now we have an explanation for something that

otherwise looks to be anomalous.

So that is what I would mean by looking at our own results before we make the final decision.

Mr. RYAN. OK. And at your request, the National Academy of

Sciences has a special panel that has been convened, headed by

Janet Norwood, which we have been discussing today, to review

this. How important do you believe is the task of this panel? And

do you know what their time line is? What is going to be the time

line of the panel for evaluating the statistical methods?

Mr. PREWITT. Well, we think this panel is very important, and

our work with the National Academy of Sciences has been very important over the entire decade. However, the decision itself about

what the Census Bureau is obligated to do to fulfill its constitutional and other statutory obligations is clearly a decision of the

Census Bureau and not an independent committee of the National

Academy.

Mr. RYAN. Let me ask you this: Will you wait for the evaluation

of the panel before you release your adjusted numbers?

Mr. PREWITT. Well, of course not. We have to release our adjusted numbers according to our statutory deadlines.

Mr. RYAN. Let’s get to the political part of this.

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Mr. PREWITT. I don’t know when they are going to do their evaluation. They are independent of us.

Mr. RYAN. Let me get to the political part of this, and I understand your comments where you say this is ridiculous that the census could be politicized. Well, I don’t see you as a political person.

I don’t see those who work with you at the Census Bureau as political people. I see you as doing a job and you have done a good job

of enumeration and I would like to give you credit for that. You are

working at a statistical adjustment. You are doing what you have

been trained to do.

But your boss is the President of the United States. Your boss

below him is the Secretary of Commerce. Very political people, the

head of another political party. So you can understand why you

would see these kinds of allegations. I don’t think people are saying

Ken Prewitt is a politician who is seeking political ends with the

statistical adjustment. But you can see it is very rational to take

a look at the situation and who you work for and then make those

conclusions.

The concern that I think many people have is the compressed

timetable. In 1991, the Bureau discovered a computer error in the

PES system that threw the undercount off by a million people.

Then during a series of evaluations that took about 2 years the Bureau discovered more errors in the system that added millions of

people erroneously. Now so far in the census research has shown

that the Bureau has had two computer errors. One printed 120 million wrong addresses, the other failed to print millions of surnames. These things happen. But given the 1990 experience, and

given that small computer errors produce millions of problems very

easily in the adjustment, there is cause for concern.

So can you understand that people in Congress and in the scientific community are alarmed at the prospect of making adjusted

numbers official after less than 4 months of evaluation? That is the

cause for concern. And the other question I have in that is are you

trying to have the official numbers done by January 20th? Is that

a deadline that you are trying to shoot for?

Mr. PREWITT. You mean the redistricting numbers? The apportionment numbers?

Mr. RYAN. Yes.

Mr. PREWITT. Absolutely not, sir. There is no way we could—— Mr. RYAN. The official adjusted numbers, not just the redistricting numbers. And—well, I will let you answer.

Mr. PREWITT. I think I know where you are going. There is of

course the apportionment number, which is December 31, and that

will be finished on schedule. There is then the redistricting number, which is April 1st. The current plan for redistricting numbers

is that they will be adjusted numbers or corrected numbers. Under

no circumstances would our schedule allow us to produce that data

tape prior to January 20th.

Mr. RYAN. I understand. I understand that the official adjustment leads to the redistricting numbers. But don’t you think it is

a reasonable concern that given the problems that can occur with

an adjustment, that a 4-month timetable is relatively rapid?

Mr. PREWITT. Oh, yes, sir. In fact, I would say, Congressman

Ryan, that trying to get the basic census done in 9 months puts

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a lot of pressure on us. And, indeed, a coding error can occur in

the enumeration process as well as in the correction process. It can

just occur, and the ones that you have cited occurred in the basic

census. And indeed it is quite possible that we will find out 2 years

from now that we made some error. We don’t expect to find that

in the enumeration, but if so, we would have already reapportioned

and we would have to say ‘‘too bad,’’ we made an error and there

it is.

It is not something unique to the ACE process, it is something

that is a characteristic of the entire process.

We obviously learned a lot based on 1990 and 1980, where we

did these exercises, and we have put in place—and this is what

this documentation is all about—we have put in place with respect

to our software development work enormous layers of redundancy.

We are double-coding every piece of software in the ACE estimation process. And then we have compared the results of two

completely separate writings of the software code. And we have

built in quality assurance processes.

So we know it is a tight time schedule, but so is the census a

tight time schedule. Everything in this process is a tight time

schedule. We are pleased that the errors that have been discovered

so far did not have operational consequences and they were, out of

2,500 different pieces of software, one or two.

Mr. RYAN. The last thing I would want to do is force you to do

sloppy work by making you compress into an artificially chosen

timetable. Let me go back to the fact that the task of the National

Academy of Sciences, at your request, is to evaluate the quality and

accuracy of the ACE. Why will you not wait for their review of your

data before releasing your official adjusted numbers?

Mr. PREWITT. Because we have a statutory deadline that says we

must release numbers by April 1st. The National Academy of

Science will take a couple of years. We always ask the National

Academy of Science to evaluate our work.

Mr. RYAN. What good is their analysis if you are not going to

wait for it?

Mr. PREWITT. Just the way the 1990 analysis helped us plan

2000, their 2000 analysis will help us for 2010. That is just the nature of the system. We cannot delegate—we cannot delegate, as the

Census Bureau, the decision about what numbers to give this country to an independent agency.

Mr. RYAN. I’m not saying you’re delegating the decision to an

independent agency as to what numbers you give. But if you’re

asking the scientific community to review your data, to review the

accuracy of your data before making them official, you ought to

wait for them to review your data before making them official. That

is where I think the point can be adequately made under reasonable terms that there could be a politicization of this process. That

is the concern. If you are not going to wait for the scientific community to look at the data, to look at the accuracy, to make sure

things were done correctly, and rush to get these data—these adjusted numbers out there in an official capacity, then why bother?

Those questions I think are very serious questions.

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One more question and I see you are going to answer it. If you

were to release the numbers early how much kind of warning

would Congress have when you release the adjusted numbers?

Mr. PREWITT. If we release them early? You mean prior to April

1st?

Mr. RYAN. Yes.

Mr. PREWITT. We historically have released adjusted numbers on

a flow basis. That is as soon as we finish a State we release it. And

we have certain States that have faster deadlines than other States

with respect to redistricting. And that is what we have informed

the States, we will get to them as soon as possible. We do not expect to have any State completed before early March. But I can

imagine that we will have States out as early as March 5th, some

States out March 11th. We are going to be driving toward an April

1st deadline.

I’m not sure what you mean by informing Congress of this. We

normally simply release redistricting data tapes on a flow basis

starting as soon as we can. I am happy to tell the Congress when

we have that schedule. There is nothing secret about that schedule.

Mr. RYAN. That would be appreciated.

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, let me yield for a moment to the ranking member.

Mrs. MALONEY. I thank Mr. Davis for his yielding and for his

outstanding leadership on this issue.

I just wanted to respond to the series of questions that my dear

friend and colleague, Congressman Ryan, was putting forth and

ask you, Dr. Prewitt—Director Prewitt, can we expect from you the

same independence and independent judgment and action that we

saw in Dr. Barbara Bryant when she opposed former President

Bush and Secretary Mosbacher and came out for modern scientific

methods because she believed in them? We have a long history of

independence in the Census Department and in Census Directors

in speaking out for what they think is right for an accurate count

for America. Can we expect the same type of independent action on

your part?

Mr. PREWITT. Congresswoman Maloney, if the Census Bureau

looks at the adjusted data, the corrected data in February-March

and if I am then the Director and we decide that these data have

some serious flaw in them, we will simply not release them. And

irrespective of what the President of the United States wants, whoever that may be at that time, irrespective of what the Secretary

of Commerce wants—now if they make us do it, as Mr. Mosbacher

overruled Dr. Bryant, I don’t know what we would do. But certainly the Census Bureau would not wish to release any data product in which it did not have confidence.

I might say, continuing on this line if I could for a moment, that

I believe that in 1980 that the decision about whether to adjust or

not was left to Vince Barbara, then the Director of the Census Bureau. I think that is the proper level for this decision. And in 1990,

the decision was not left to the professionals at the Census Bureau;

instead, it was made at the Secretary of Commerce. I would strongly urge, strongly urge that the decision in 2000 be made by the

level of the Census Bureau, regardless of who may be the Secretary

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of Commerce at that time. But I believe that this is not a decision

that should be made at the level of the Commerce Secretary, but

should be made at the level of the Census Bureau itself and its Director.

Indeed we have in place a standing committee that meets every

2 weeks that goes through all of this technical stuff, and it is designed to follow the ACE process very closely, both in terms of its

statistical theory, in terms of its operations, and then make a recommendation to the Director as to whether to use it or not.

Just if I could continue for a second, Congressman Ryan, I did

not fully—I do understand some of the concerns. I’m not trying to

dismiss the concerns. I’m only trying to say that there is no evidence for those concerns. And even if a member of the Supreme

Court says that it could happen doesn’t mean it could happen. I

don’t know technically. If you think about it, you are sitting there

trying to generate these data and you are now saying in what State

is there a redistricting battle in which there is a Governor of this

party and a legislature of this party and what are the processes

and what would we have to do to get the data—I mean, if you actually think about it for a moment practically, how in the world

would we do it?

Are we sitting there sort of looking at voter turnout in different

States? Are we sitting there looking at the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches in different States?

Do we even understand how different States do redistricting? If you

actually look at it practically, it is inconceivable that the Census

Bureau in that environment of trying to produce good data is now

going to take on this extra task of finding out what are the likely

political implications in a given State.

It’s just not in the cards, and I don’t see how people can think

it is in the cards. I don’t care if they are on the Supreme Court,

sir. I don’t know what evidence he has to make that accusation. I

simply don’t know what the basis of that accusation is.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Reclaiming my time, you know as I was

listening to my friend and colleague from Wisconsin, I was saying

to myself, as he described the hierarchy relationship of the executive branch that there is no way that he would think that people

with the name Daley and Clinton would be seeing this in a political

way.

Mr. RYAN. Never, ever.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. They wouldn’t by no stretch of the imagination.

Dr. Prewitt, let me try and make sure that I understand some

of the technical language. It is my understanding that capture

probability does not necessarily mean that everybody in a category

are the same, but there are enough similarities that in terms of the

probability of them being counted or enumerated becomes essentially the same.

Mr. PREWITT. That is exactly correct, sir, yes, sir.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. So they don’t have to have all of the same

characteristics but there are enough factors—— Mr. PREWITT. They are certainly not clones of each other as was

suggested. We have done a lot of research for 40 or 50 years on

this, and what we do say is what are the probabilities that we will

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include in the census people with this set of characteristics. That’s

all it says. It doesn’t say they are alike in all other ways; just how

similar are they with respect to the probability of catching them in

the census.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. In statistical language, is there a difference between correctedness and accurateness?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir. Accuracy really has to do with the truth.

And all statistical operations are estimations of the truth. That is

true of the basic census. There is a true number of people who

lived in the United States on April 1st. Our census is an estimation

of that. We use the ACE to get closer to estimating that truth. ‘‘Accuracy’’ would be if we actually found and counted every one

of them. We will never be able to do that for you. We believe we

will get you closer to the truth by using this process, or we

wouldn’t be doing it. Why else would we do it? We have lots of

things to do. We only do statistical procedures because we believe

they get us closer to the truth. So accuracy has to do with how

close to the truth can we get.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. And so the closest that you could possibly

get would be through the use of corrected data? Is that accurate?

Mr. PREWITT. We believe so.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. And so it becomes almost—I mean, we

are trying to get as close as we can—— Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS [continuing]. To making sure that every

person in the country is, indeed, accounted for.

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. And so without using the corrected data,

we would obviously then just say to ourselves that we are going to

leave those individuals out.

Mr. PREWITT. Mr. Davis, I could answer that as follows: let us

say that in 2000 we were not doing an accuracy and coverage evaluation. We were simply doing the basic count and then stopping

and then we came up with a number, 275,311,000 or whatever. It

would be my judgment that a more accurate number to give to the

country would be that number plus 1.6 percent. Which is to say,

I would still rather use the 1990 estimate of the undercount even

for the 2000 data if we were not doing an accuracy and coverage

evaluation. I would be convinced that that number that we counted

plus 1.6 percent would be a more accurate number than simply

stopping with the basic count. We will do better because the accuracy and coverage evaluation that we have in place for 2000 is a

much better tool to use than one from 1990, but even one from

1990 would give us a more accurate count, one that was closer to

the truth than simply stopping with the basic enumeration.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. I know that we have talked a great deal

about enumeration and there is a cutoff period. There is a time

when we expect to have this done. Should we continue to experience difficulty in some areas, will that cutoff date be adhered to or

is there any way to continue up to a point of satisfaction?

Mr. PREWITT. We will certainly continue, Mr. Davis. We expect

across 520 offices to have completed most of our work in most of

them by our cutoff date, which is July 7th. But that is not a cutoff

date; that is a date in our master activity schedule. But certainly,

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as was true in 1990 and all censuses, there are always some local

offices where we have not fully exhausted all of our procedures and

we will continue in those areas until we have exhausted all of our

procedures, until we cannot think that going back yet again is likely to give a response at that household.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. And so one can expect that every effort

or maximum effort will be made to make sure that we even reach

those individuals that we are having difficulty with.

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir, but at a certain point, we know that we

are simply wasting taxpayer dollars. And so at a certain point we

are better off—I mean, how many times do you want to go back

and knock on a door where nobody ever answers and the person

who answers says I don’t care what you say to me, I’m not going

to give you that information. We could send that person back 4

times, 6 times, 27 times—— Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. In some instances it would remind me,

if you just keep doing it of, you know, a young woman met a soldier

and wanted to get married and she said: Soldier, soldier, would you

marry me with your fife and drum, and he said no, pretty miss, I

can’t marry you, I don’t have any shoes. So she ran and got him

some shoes. Came back, same thing, would you marry me with

your fife and drum? No, pretty miss, I can’t marry you, I don’t have

a tuxedo to put on. So she ran and got the tuxedo and came back.

And said, soldier, soldier, will you marry me with your fife and

drum? Finally, he says no, pretty miss, I can’t marry you because

I’ve got a pretty little wife at home.

And so it seems to me that you are saying at some point, people

are going to say: Get away from my door, just don’t come back—— Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS [continuing]. Anymore. I mean, those individuals who are inclined to do so.

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Let me ask you, of course there has been

a lot of conversation about my city, the city of the big shoulders,

the city of Chicago, in terms of difficulty that we are having. Could

you elaborate on what’s going on there and what we are doing?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir, and Congressman Ryan will also be interested because it is not just the city of Chicago but the Chicago region. I do want to say that the Chicago region as a region is actually in fairly good shape. It is not our strongest region but it is certainly not our weakest region. Indeed, when you take into account

both the mail-back response rate and the completion of the nonrespondent followup workload, the Chicago region is roughly in the

middle right now and since the whole scale is high right now that

means we are in good shape. Even in the very worst region we’re

actually in good shape.

Now with respect to the city itself, I believe there are now four

local census offices where we believe that we have had to improve

the strength of our local management and we have done so. In

some instances we have actually changed the local manager. In another instance we brought in additional management help. Sometimes what happens, Congressman Davis, is that there is more

work going on than the system records because stuff just stacks up

and somebody doesn’t have to process that stuff every 6 hours to

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get it and so forth and so on. We are finding that out. That may

not be an explanation but that may be part of the explanation in

Chicago.

I certainly think that we are running in Chicago into deep resistance to cooperating with the census. And that is actually happening at both ends of the economic scale. We are running into very

difficult times in the near north in gated communities. These are

people who are very busy. They are, you know, worried about their

stock market returns and so forth. They did not send the return

in and now we’re having a hard time getting past the doormen who

guard these buildings and it is extremely difficult.

On the other hand, what we do is we do special things. We go

to the building manager. If that doesn’t work we go to the owner

of the building. If not, we sometimes go to somebody influential in

the city and try to get them to make that call. And at the other

end of the economic scale, as you well know, the poverty people

that you mentioned in your own district, those are very resistant

people. They are disconnected from the society. They are indifferent

to their obligations. They do not feel that the U.S. Government or

the local government cares about them and why in the world

should they cooperate with this?

That’s why we do an accuracy and coverage evaluation. We are

doing one quarter of 1 percent of the households. When you’re

doing nearly one quarter of 1 percent of the gated communities

with your very best people, you have a higher probability of getting

in than when you are trying to do the entire universe of gated communities. It is the same thing with the young African-American

male in the Robert Taylor home. It is very difficult to get them all.

On the other hand, when you’re doing one quarter of 1 percent

of them with your very best enumerators the probabilities have just

gone way up that you will get them. And that is what we do in

order to calculate the undercount.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. After this is all over, does the Bureau

have sociologists and researchers and people who will try and

study the situation and make some determinations relative to this

deep resistance that you spoke of?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir. Yes, we do. We did—after 1990 we had

anthropologists and sociologists trying to help us understand these

population groups.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Finally, I think it would certainly be

good, and I understand that you are trying to make a trip out to

Chicago to give whatever additional assurances to the elected officials and the citizens there that every effort is, in fact, being made

to overcome the deep resistance that we might be experiencing, and

I certainly look forward to that happening.

Mr. PREWITT. Thank you, sir.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Director, let me followup one more point on

what I was asking earlier about the broad classifications we are

using. And I would like to enter into the record a letter I received

from Dr. Friedman, who is head of the Statistics Department at

University of California at Berkley. He said, ‘‘It is assumed that all

Non-Hispanic Asians age 0 to 17 living in rental units are equally

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likely to be undercounted from the suburbs of Honolulu to Chinatown in New York. This assumption is plainly false.’’ They have done studies to show that there are huge variations

within post-strata across States and so there is a real concern

about that. You are well aware of that concern.

Let me now switch to the issue again of transparency with respect to the ACE. You indicated your intention to make the census

fully transparent and free from charges of political manipulation.

Will you commit to releasing the E sample and the P sample files

from the ACE for analysis by the academic and scientific community as soon as they are available to the Bureau? They are not confidential files and for 1990 they were not made available until

1998.

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, I don’t know the 1990 to 1998 process, but certainly they will be made available, yes, sir.

Mr. MILLER. There is a real concern about the decision process

of which is going to be the more accurate set of data. And if the

National Academy of Sciences is not going to be able to make a decision prior to March 2001, who is going to make that decision?

Now, my understanding in 1991, when this decision was made,

that there was a panel within the Bureau of experts that was basically equally divided to help, we may need more clarification, but

there was some panel of experts within the Bureau. But you are

not going to rely on the National Academy of Sciences because they

are going to take too long, I gather.

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir, we could not wait. The National Academy

of Sciences will do an evaluation—there is already a 2010—— Mr. MILLER. So how is the decision going to be made? Is it going

to be made—of course you won’t be there, unless whoever is appointed President. We know there is going to be a new President.

But Mr. Thompson, Mr. Hogan will certainly still be there. What

experts? Are they strictly Bureau employees or who is going to

come up with the recommendations? I think there was some outside people making recommendations, acknowledged experts.

Mr. PREWITT. What will occur—let’s just talk about 2000. What

will occur in 2000 and is occurring in 2000, we do have an executive committee that follows the ACE process. As I say it meets

every 2 or 3 weeks, many members of which are here behind me.

I think there are maybe 9—no, it is larger than that, maybe 13

members of that who represent all Census Bureau employees who

are math statisticians, demographers, field operations experts and

so forth. And they look at every one of these processes, every one

of these processes, and make a judgment and deliberation about

what will make the most successful census.

They will continue to meet right through the entire process. The

way they are designed, that committee is chaired by John Thompson and it is advisory to the Director. It will make a recommendation to the Director, is the process.

Mr. MILLER. One of the concerns I’ve had going back a couple of

years or so is you can have a bias within a committee. If I select

a committee or Mrs. Maloney selects a committee, if we have sole

responsibility for selecting it, it will be a bias by who we select. I

mean you ask Mr. Davis and Mrs. Maloney, they are going to have

one set of opinions. Mr. Ryan and I will have another. My underVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:01 May 21, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00095 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\71389.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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standing was more of a nonpartisan—if you select all people that

are already biased in favor of adjustment, you are going to have

that conclusion. And I’m sure Dr. Hogan, who is a respected statistician is bias to some extent. Because he has had his heart and

soul in this for a decade, he’s been working on this program.

But Mr. Friedman—Dr. Friedman at the University of California—Berkeley, who is not going to have any input in it is a respected statistician too. So, I mean are the only people that are

going to provide input just going to be people who are ‘‘yes’’ people?

Mr. PREWITT. No, sir, I don’t know what you mean by ‘‘yes’’ people.

Mr. MILLER. I don’t consider Dr. Hogan a yes person.

Mr. PREWITT. You wouldn’t if you met with him. These are professionals.

Mr. MILLER. I want to make sure there is a diversion of opinions

in the decision process.

Mr. PREWITT. If you sat and listened to some of the arguments

that go into this you would appreciate there is a divergence of opinion. And it certainly includes people who in 1990 thought we

should not have adjusted who are employees and very senior, important employees at the Census Bureau. This is not a committee

that was sort of put together that way. It is a committee all of

whom have defined positions. These are the senior positions, and

so they are there by virtue of the position they hold, not the kind

of assumption they have. We did not test anybody’s viewpoint.

Mr. MILLER. There are no outsiders participating in this?

Mr. PREWITT. No.

Mr. MILLER. But there was in 1990 is my understanding.

Mr. PREWITT. No, that was a different process. I can describe

that. That is a different process.

Mr. MILLER. I would be interested to have an explanation of how

the process or the decision will be made. In your written testimony

you say you will use something called dual system estimation to estimate the degree to which each of the 448 categories of post-strata

is overcounted or undercounted. Then you would assign a certain

weight to that category which would tell you how many people to

add or subtract from that particular segment of the population; is

that correct?

Mr. PREWITT. Is that correct? I don’t think that is exactly my

wording. I don’t think I talked about—I would have to look it up,

but I think it talks about statistical records, not people.

Mr. MILLER. Let me proceed. If it is possible to have strata with

adjustment factors of more than one, you have an adjustment factor of—it may be 1.1, 1.2, it is also possible to have post-strata with

adjustment factors of less than 1. That is people fitting a certain

description could be multiplied by a factor of 0.8 or 0.9.

Mr. PREWITT. Correct.

Mr. MILLER. Correct? OK. Let’s take an example, let’s say you

are talking about the following: A non-Hispanic White woman age

30 to 49 living in the suburbs who own their own homes in the

Midwest. Let’s say the Bureau estimates a 5 percent overcount of

these women. The Bureau would give this group an adjustment factor of 0.95. So if the unadjusted census counted 100 people—100

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women in a block, the adjusted number would show only 95 in that

block.

The truth is if the actual census counts 100 people in a block but

in the ACE all of these people fall in a category that the Bureau

estimates were overcounted, the adjusted population of the block

will be less than 100. So we are in effect deleting people from the

census.

Mr. PREWITT. No, we’re not.

Mr. MILLER. I mean, if we have 100 people and their adjustment

factor is 0.95, we are only going to have 95 people counted. No? I

know we’re not going to destroy forms. We’re not talking about the

forms being there, but the fact if—— Mr. PREWITT. It is very important to make the American public

understand that 72 years from now, when you and I go together

to the National Archives, everyone who submitted a form will find

their record there. And there will be no form there from anyone

who did not submit a form. That is, the actual census file itself will

include everyone who cooperated in this census.

Now, we are now talking about a statistical record. And that is

a different process. So it is not anything about people being subtracted or virtual people or anything else. We’re talking about a

statistical process. The answer, sir, is yes. Where we have evidence

that a certain population group was double-counted, to leave

records for those people in the statistical record, means that we

have now inflated some number. We are now giving to the country

something which we know to be incorrect, and we don’t think we

should do that.

Mr. MILLER. If two people completed the form, one in Florida and

one in New York and it is the same person, we don’t want that.

I understand that. But the problem is my understanding is that if

you have 100 people living in an apartment high-rise or something.

If that is a statistical classification that is considered overcounted—you have 100 people you count, we have 100 forms that

are returned. All right? And you have 100 people listed by name.

But then because that fit in a classification that is considered overcounted, you are going to subtract people from that so the actual

count instead of 100 would be 98, or whatever adjustment number;

right?

Mr. PREWITT. Otherwise we would be giving the country incorrect

data.

Mr. MILLER. Then you are deleting people from the census.

Mr. PREWITT. No, we were not deleting people.

Mr. MILLER. Wait a minute. We’re keeping the forms. I understand the forms are going to be there. I don’t know if they are

going to be physically kept, that is a different issue. People are

going to get counted less than a 1.0. You are counted as a 0.98, a

0.95. You are going to have fewer people. If you have 100 people

that fill out that form, you have 100 names in that area and it

comes out with a 0.98 adjustment factor because of the statistical

analysis, then you are only going to have the number that is going

to show up on the adjusted, or you like to call it corrected, the adjusted number is 98 people. Two fewer people.

Mr. PREWITT. Happy to call it adjusted. Again, if I could just take

a moment, the people that you are describing, that is the category

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of persons that you are describing, we have independent evidence

that those kinds of persons were double-counted at the rate of .02

percent, to use your example. And, therefore, to leave statistical

records of that category at the level which you are recommending

that we do means that basically we’re deliberately leaving in the

census counts people who have been double-counted, because they

counted their college student and we found their college student at

the dormitory. That happens.

And what we know from 1990 is there were as many as 4 million

cases. So, yes, we have a statistical procedure that for the purposes

of giving this country accurate data for reapportionment, for redistricting, for Federal funding, we have a process that does not give

the country incorrect data when we know it is incorrect. Nothing

more complicated than that.

Mr. MILLER. If you have 100 names in this area, in this block,

and your statistical analyses says that is an overcounted population, so even though you have 100 names of 100 separate individuals, you are going to statistically remove two, three, four, whatever the number of people of that overage is. And this is one of the

problems about all of these post-strata. It is like the issue Dr.

Friedman talks about, your claim that you are getting these numbers from Asians in Hawaii and Asians in Chinatown are the same.

They have the same response rate. Some studies show that they

don’t behave the same. And, you know, I guess you have got proof

that shows that the Cubans in Miami respond at the same rate of

response as the Mexicans in Los Angeles or in El Paso or somewhere.

I mean you are saying they are exactly the same behavior. Based

on that, you can delete people or add people, which is hard to say

that—I have not been to Los Angeles——

Mr. PREWITT. That is your characterization, not ours, sir.

Mr. MILLER. But aren’t you using—well, you have already said

you’re using—all Hispanics were one classification. Whether you

are a Hispanic in El Paso or Houston or New York City or Chicago

or Wisconsin, you get counted the same and you get adjusted the

same if you are Hispanic.

Mr. PREWITT. I didn’t quite say that. I said——

Mr. MILLER. Well, but aren’t all Hispanic one category, period?

Mr. PREWITT. No.

Mr. MILLER. No?

Mr. PREWITT. All Hispanics who also are in census tracts with

low response rates who also rent their houses, who also are between the ages of 18 and 29, who also are women, who also are

unrelated to anyone else in that household. All of those people who

have that set of characteristics constitute a universe of those people.

And then we take a sample of those persons and, on the basis

of that sample, estimate for that universe of people who have all

of those characteristics—not just Hispanic, but all of those characteristics—what are the probabilities that they were caught in the

census. And that is the process that we used. It is not ‘‘all Hispanics’’ because we are—it’s like saying all renters or all people between ages of 18 and 29 or all anything else.

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Mr. MILLER. But the post-strata for Hispanics is all Hispanics,

whether again they are in El Paso or Chicago or Miami, they are

all the same. Whether it is Guatemalan, Honduran——

Mr. PREWITT. I just have to say this again. They are not all the

same.

Mr. MILLER. Statistically, you’re putting them in one classification.

Let me ask another question. When you take someone—subtract

someone from the record, you subtract them, but it’s not because

of a duplicate. It’s just that some statistical model says subtract

one person. When you have 100 people on a block and the statistical model says subtract somebody, it’s not because you have a duplicate. It’s because you have 100 specific names there, but it’s because of the statistical models, not because of a duplicate.

Mr. PREWITT. That’s a separate process. Subtracting duplicates is

a separate process.

Mr. MILLER. Go ahead and finish what you were going to say.

Mr. PREWITT. We don’t treat all Hispanics like all other Hispanics. We treat Hispanics who rent, who are of a certain age, who

are of a certain gender, of a certain relationship to the household.

That is the post-stratum. Not all Hispanics. They all have to live

in a metropolitan area. So it’s simply incorrect to say that all Hispanics belong to the same post-stratum.

Mr. MILLER. But the Hispanics that meet those classifications

can be living in Los Angeles, El Paso, Houston, Miami, or New

York or Chicago as long as they meet those general classifications.

Then they are all adjusted. Asians in Honolulu are being pooled

with the ones in New York, and you’re saying they respond the

same.

Let me go on to Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Dr. Prewitt, would you please answer Chairman

Miller’s line of questioning without interruption? I would like to

give you an opportunity to explain the process without interruption.

Mr. PREWITT. I think the particular process we’re talking about

is the structuring of the post-stratum which, as he said, there are

448. These constitute identifications of population groups, and one

of the identifying characteristics is their ethnicity or their race. It’s

only one of their identifying characteristics. Another is whether it’s

a metropolitan area or not, the size of the metropolitan area. Another is, as I say, age, renter status and so forth and so on. That

constitutes a post-stratum, and it is our judgment that everyone

who inhabits that post-stratum has a more similar probability of

being captured in the census than someone in a different post-stratum.

Everyone in the country is put into post-stratum. You are. You’re

put in as a White female between 18 and 29——

Mrs. MALONEY. Why is everyone laughing?

Mr. PREWITT [continuing]. Etc.

And we have—based on our experience, we have an assessment

of the probability of having caught you in the census, and that’s

true for all of these groups. Nothing more complicated than that.

That’s why they’re put together.

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We don’t yet know until we actually conduct the census how

many of them we actually did catch in the census, but we think

they constitute a reasonable, plausible, universe of people who have

roughly similar probabilities of being captured.

I have not had the chance to read Mr. Friedman’s and Mr. Walker’s letter. If they are saying that all Asians from every place are

put in one post-stratum, they are misreading our post-stratum design. They are very sophisticated statisticians, and I doubt they are

misreading it. I doubt that, the way you have characterized their

letters, the way they have written it. But I haven’t read it, but, my

guess, they understand our post-strata structure, and it’s not putting all Asians in one post-stratum. It’s not.

Mr. MILLER. It’s all Asians that meet the large metropolitan

areas and age brackets and such, too. But it’s correct that a Japanese American in Honolulu that meets that, you know, other demographic characteristics and a China person, a person from China

from New York who meets that classification, a large metropolitan

area, age brackets—— Mr. PREWITT. Mr. Miller, it’s just as—there are lots of ways to

rent a home. You can rent a condo, you can rent a co-op, you can

rent a mobile home. You can rent different kinds of homes, so all

renters are also put into a post-stratum because that’s one of our

stratification variables. It’s not just that all renters constitute a

post-stratum. It’s that all renters that also have these other characteristics create one.

So there’s nothing magic about this process to say there are a lot

of different ways in which people rent, but nevertheless we have

decided that renters on balance behave differently from owners,

and we have a lot of evidence to that effect.

Mrs. MALONEY. Dr. Prewitt, approximately how many post-strata

of the 448 include the Hispanic characteristics, approximately?

Mr. PREWITT. Fifty-six.

Mrs. MALONEY. I think this whole issue of the undercount and

the deep resistance that my colleague Danny Davis illustrated with

the poem—the time that it was clarified to me in the most stark

way were the statements of a Republican-appointed member of the

Supreme Court, Justice Stevens, when he asked the question of a

Republican lawyer—and this was before—the case that we’ve referred to before the Supreme Court. And he asked her, how would

you count a home, an address, where six people lived, yet every

time you went and knocked on that door, whether it was in the

morning or at night or whatever time, no one answered the door?

And she said, zero; we would count it zero. Then he asked, what

if you knew and all the neighbors told you that six people lived

there? She said, we would count it zero.

Then Justice Breyer asked, what if the lights go on, off and on,

every night and you see the lights going off and on every night and

you know people live in that home? How would you count that

home? And she said, zero.

And that really clarified in the starkest and really simplest of

terms why we need to adjust for the undercount when we know

that people live there, when we know that people are there. We are

being dishonest and unfair and unjust not to count the six people

that we know live there. And on the count and the issue——

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Mr. MILLER. Let Dr. Prewitt answer that.

Mrs. MALONEY. May I continue? I do not believe I’ve interrupted

you. May I continue?

Mr. MILLER. Yes.

Mrs. MALONEY. And on the issue of the double count, many of

my friends, because I am a mother, happen to be the parents of

daughters; and I can’t tell you—and my daughter is in college. I did

not count her. She is going to be counted at her university. But I

can’t tell you how many of my friends who have similar children

my daughter’s age at school either told me that they counted their

child or literally called and asked me whether or not, because they

know I’m working on the census, whether or not they should count

their child. So I’m giving these as just practical examples of why

we need this.

Now, I have a question that—Dr. Prewitt, you mentioned that

you would use the 1.6 percent if you had to, but you also said that

the tool that you had for the 2000 census was a better tool than

1990. And could you explain to us why it is better?

Mr. PREWITT. Well, obviously, we’ve drawn on our experience

from 1990. We also have a sample of approximately twice the size

of what we had in 1990. That was 150,000. Turned out to be, finally, 175,000 households. In 2000, 314,000 households. We do

think the construction of our post-strata is drawn upon research of

over 10 years about all of our matching procedures, how we’re handling movers, our software development work. There’s no end of

ways in which we try to improve it. That’s true of every census.

1990 was better than 1980, but 2000 is much, much superior

operationally, just like the census itself is superior operationally to

the 1990 census thanks to the U.S. Congress, that they allowed us

to front load our recruitment staff. That’s why we can say we’re

near 85 percent complete today. A lot of the improvements that we

put into the census we’ve also put in to our ACE design.

I just—for a moment if I could refer us all to this—I brought this

chart before—because I think it’s important. Each of those peach

boxes represent the moments in the census when we can miss people, but it also represents the moments in the census when we can

erroneously enumerate, that is, double count such as the college

students. So all the ACEs is nothing more complicated than this,

all it is, is to go to try to find those persons who returned the form

but didn’t completely mail it back. They left some people off.

It’s the people who—for whom we never got an address. We

think there won’t be many of those, but there are some. It’s the

people we got in nonresponse followup, but we didn’t get the complete household. And it’s the people we got in yet another process

called coverage improvement followup.

All of those are processes to try to get everyone. Every one of

those processes can leave someone out, and all the ACE is, is a way

to go back and find out the percentage of people in those various

boxes when we missed them, how we missed them and what their

demographic characteristics are. It’s not a very complicated thing.

It’s a very straightforward thing. If it works operationally, we

think that we should give to the country the better data, the adjusted data, the more accurate data, the more corrected data.

98

That’s all I can really say about it. It’s an attempt to find the

people we missed or to find the people we erroneously included,

that is, the double count and make certain they are not represented in the final statistical records.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much.

Mr. MILLER. I just want to ask you to clarify one thing. Mrs.

Maloney I think knows the answer to this. But when the lawyer

spoke about not counting someone if the lights come on and off,

that’s not the way the Bureau would handle that; is that correct?

Mr. PREWITT. In that particular instance we would try to get a

proxy interview.

Mr. MILLER. Correct. You would get proxy data. And, hopefully,

you could find someone that would know who lives in there, and

it would not necessarily be zero. You’d try to do everything you can

to get some type of data from someone else nearby.

Mr. RYAN. Like a neighbor or something like that.

Mr. MILLER. Right. So I think the attorney was not as clear on

the procedures as your process would show; is that correct?

Mr. PREWITT. That is correct. There are many things about that

Supreme Court ruling that were not accurate.

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Ryan.

Mr. RYAN. I have a couple of procedural questions.

It’s not always the inner city. We have to focus on the rural

areas, too. So I’d just like to put in a word for Orfordville, WI, if

I might.

Orfordville is a town of about 700 people. Hopefully, it will be a

town of 700 people after the census is done, but the interesting

thing about Orfordville is they all have post office boxes. That is

just the way it works there. They all use P.O. Boxes. So when they

didn’t get the forms they were very much alarmed.

I think we followed up with your Chicago office, and I think

we’re doing a very good job of getting some enumerators over there

to handle that situation. But what about the other Orfordvilles

throughout America, small farming towns at the intersections of

rural county trunk highways?

My question is, if we didn’t intervene on the Orfordville situation

and there are other towns like that who have P.O. Boxes who, because we don’t have post census local review, didn’t catch that and

these are not included in the master address file, how do we catch

these mistakes? Can the adjustment help a neighborhood where no

people are counted essentially?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir. But before I get to that question, we do

have procedures to find those areas where there was this—where

we thought it was city style, but it turned out to be——

Mr. RYAN. We’re working on that right now. But what if it

doesn’t work?

Mr. PREWITT. Absolutely, we would find this in the ACE. Here’s

how we would find it. Since the ACE is a random sample of all

blocks in the United States—as I say, about 12,000 blocks are in

the ACE design—one of those blocks or some set of those 12,000

blocks would be exactly those areas by definition and proportionate

to how many such areas they are.

When we go to that area in the ACE interviewing process, we’ll

knock on the door. They’ll say, I never got counted; I got left out.

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We will then determine how would that have happened, and we

will then detect exactly that problem. Indeed, it will show up because our address file won’t work.

We will have independently listed—as I say, we have independently listed every address in our ACE sample block; and we are

now saying, my goodness, something has gone wrong. Because we

have a listing of this household, but it’s not in our master address

file. How could that have happened?

Then we’ll determine how that happened, and when we do the

adjustment we will be able to adjust for exactly those population

groups who fit into this top upper right peach box. This is missed

housing units. Our ACE design is as focused on making sure that

we account for missed housing units as missed people in known

housing units.

Mr. RYAN. I’m going to go back to this Orfordville example, because I think it’s an interesting one. Not only do they all use mostly P.O. Boxes—but let’s take Footville, which is the town just up

the road. Footville, for some reason, your master address file, even

though the LUCA tried to change this, the change was not incorporated. You included everybody who lived in Footville, WI, a town

of about 600 as if they were Janesville, WI, residents. So the names

were correct. The addresses, however—the street addresses were

right, but the cities were—were the larger city in that county. And

they all had P.O. Boxes.

So when the enumerators came around to collect the data, they

knocked on the door. The people would say, I never got a form; I

was never counted; I was worried you wouldn’t come by; glad you’re

here. And the enumerator then had a Janesville address.

Now it’s up to the person who answered the door to change that

address, I assume, from Janesville to Footville, but what if that

didn’t take place? What if an enumerator didn’t make it to the

house that was a P.O. Box and the address for the entire small

town was lumped into another city and those people weren’t counted? That means in a town of, say, 600 people you missed 200 people. That’s a third of the city of the town. How does the adjustment

fix that?

Mr. PREWITT. I want to make certain that we give you a full answer to this. So what I’m saying may not be completely responsive.

It’s my understanding that what would happen—the important

thing is the addresses are all geocoded, which means whatever the

kind of the denominator is, what the town is called—— Mr. RYAN. Footville.

Mr. PREWITT. Footville is called——

Mr. RYAN. Janesville.

Mr. PREWITT. Janesville, that the important thing is to make

sure that when we count the person in that household they occur

on the block. From the census point of view, the name of the community is not what’s important. The unit of analysis for us is the

block, and they will be geocoded to that block. So they will appear

in the right place.

Now, the process by which we make sure that all of our blocks

get attached to the right place, but now we’ve got to make sure to

connect to the right denominator. That wouldn’t be a problem of

the adjustment. That would be a problem of our geographic division

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working with the local community. It would be easy to fix because

we know where they are.

Mr. RYAN. I see my time running out. You mentioned in my earlier questioning that you’re going to be giving the States the redistricting numbers kind of on a State-by-State basis starting maybe

March 5 and then moving out, but your post-strata adjustment is

based on a national scale, correct?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. RYAN. How do you take that into consideration as you’re releasing State redistricting data on a State-by-State basis—when

your post-strata is national, how does that jibe or correspond

with—say you put Vermont’s out in March and then you put Wisconsin’s out in April, then California’s out in later April, how does

that correspond and how does that take into account the fact that

the post-strata is national but you’re sending out individual States

earlier?

Mr. PREWITT. All of the work that will have been used to create

the correction numbers on a national basis will have already been

done across all 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto

Rico, and the actual mechanical process of actually now creating

the right products takes a while, and it takes a couple of days or

whatever.

I better be careful, though, have to correct me, but it takes a period of time, and we will simply turn first to those States which

have earlier redistricting deadlines as best we can. I should say the

entire—I’m not making a promise about March 5. I’m only saying

that, in principle, it will be a flow basis to try to respond to your

question about January 20.

But, basically, we could wait until the last day of the month,

March 31, to mail them all out the same day. But I think, as a

courtesy of the States, we would want to get them out where we

can get them out sooner where possible, but all of the work that

has to be done in terms of making the correction numbers from the

post stata will have already been done. Otherwise, the implication

of your question is correct. We couldn’t do one State and so forth.

Mr. RYAN. One more question. The apportionment data—and correct me if I’m wrong, the apportionment data will be done before

the ACE adjustment is completed?

Mr. PREWITT. Correct.

Mr. RYAN. How will you be taking into consideration Orfordville

and Footville, WI? If the apportionment data is done before the adjustment and if those towns aren’t fixed and counted for, will they

not be lost in apportionment but—may be caught up in redistricting but won’t they be lost in apportionment if they are not fixed

with the adjustment beforehand?

Mr. PREWITT. Not if they are in Wisconsin. The apportionment

number is nothing but a State total.

Mr. RYAN. You’re saying because it is this block, but what if an

enumerator didn’t hit a door and no one got answered?

Mr. PREWITT. No. If they are not captured in the census and we

have not done the ACE, then the Wisconsin number will be deficient by that amount.

Mr. RYAN. Because we have a lot of reports about rural areas

who are subsisting mainly of P.O. Boxes and the enumerators just

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don’t catch them—you know, we’re planting right now in Wisconsin. People are in the field. They are not in their homes right now.

Wouldn’t a post census local review make sense? Wouldn’t a 1-

month post census local review—let the county clerks, let the local

county board supervisors take a look at the data and say, gosh, you

missed half the town of Orfordville because, during the time you

were coming around with enumerators, they were out in the field

planting. Wouldn’t post census local review make sense for these

cases?

And these cases I appeal to you are not unique. They are all over

the place. Our Governor, Tommy Thompson, is saying he’s getting

it from the entire State of Wisconsin. Why wouldn’t we want to do

post census local review for those kinds of instances?

Mr. PREWITT. Obviously, a post census local review would have

to be done for 39,000 jurisdictions, not just yours, which means

you’re asking us to redo the census starting sometime in October

or November. That’s impractical. If you wanted an apportionment

number by December 31, we can’t start redoing the census based

upon 39,000 different mayors or county commissioners saying we

would like you to come back and count again because we don’t

think everybody got included.

Mr. RYAN. What about a voluntary post census local review, like

localwise?

Mr. PREWITT. This gets into a very complicated thing having to

do with the nature of distributive accuracy and numeric accuracy.

It’s really what the court case went to and so forth. And I can get

into this if we have time, but any kind of voluntary process like

that that was used in some places and not other places would have

all kinds—at this late stage in the census would have all kinds of

implications for the final quality of the data.

I can’t imagine if we made this voluntary that the only State

that would be interested would be Wisconsin. I think every State

in the country would say come back and count us again. We may

find a few more people. That is what the ACE does.

Congressman Ryan, I’m not trying—you are making a case for

the ACE. You are making a case for why we have to do this quality

process to go out and determine if we miss people, where they live,

and then correct for that.

Mr. RYAN. Actually, I’m making a case for post census local review for apportionment and everything else because LUCA was designed to fix this. It didn’t fix it, though, in some of these towns.

Some of these towns did participate in LUCA, did send their data,

and they still—we still have the problems.

So that’s why I’m saying, why not exhaust every effort possible?

I still contend that there may be a chance, there may be a small

timeline, a small window to do a voluntary post census local review

so these rural towns who are having these problems can make sure

they are counted. There is a lot of anxiety out there over this. I just

appeal to you to take a look at that.

Mr. MILLER. We have a vote coming up, but we have time for Mr.

Davis.

Actually, I’m glad, Mr. Ryan, you’re on this panel. Because rural

areas, as we all know, have problems of their own. And we keep

focused on large metropolitan areas and the migrant population,

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immigrant population, but there are unique problems in rural

America, so I’m glad you can bring them up.

I agree with you, by the way. It’s too bad we don’t have full census local review which the House of Representatives passed but

was opposed by the Census Bureau and by the Democrats.

Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Dr. Prewitt, are there any post-strata

groups that we’ve conclusively determined to absolutely be the

most difficult ones to enumerate or count?

Mr. PREWITT. Well, based on our 1990 experience, we would expect a group that was made up of young African American males

in inner cities who rent and who live in irregular housing, thats

unrelated to each other and so forth in that housing, that’s likely

to be a particularly hard-to-count population group.

Also, based on 1990, though we think we’ve done a lot of work

on this, Indians living on reservations with other sets of characteristics were more difficult to count.

Age is actually a big factor in how well we count people. That’s

also true in the rural areas.

By the way, the post-strata structure, of course, includes a special post-strata just for rural areas and especially for rural areas

where they rent, which we know to be a hard-to-count population

group, highly mobile and so forth. So we are—in that sense, the design takes care of—it sweeps across all of the problem situations

in the country, not just fixed on the one.

But, yes, sir, we will have a particularly difficult time with that

particular population group.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. I thank you very much. I think it’s been

a very productive hearing, and I certainly want to thank you for

your responses.

And, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you; and I’m going to yield

to the ranking member here.

Mrs. MALONEY. I tell you I’m getting tired of all of this, of this

constant effort really to disrupt the efforts of the professionals at

the Census Bureau from doing their job and from correcting the

undercount.

I would like to put in the record an article from the ‘‘Washington

Post’’ written by David Broder entitled, Playing Hardball on the

Census; and I think he clearly puts into focus what’s going on.

He says, in preparing for the showdown on the census, Republicans reshuffled the leadership of the House Census Subcommittee

and hired its new staff director, Thomas Hofeller—this was back in

1998—a Ph.D. Professor and battle-tested GOP strategist in redistricting. And he talks about meeting with Hofeller and how

Hofeller goes to a blackboard analysis of the Census Bureau’s plans

stressing the risks they see of serious miscalculation with untested

techniques and a tight timetable.

But as I was leaving, Broder says, Hofeller offered a decidedly

non-academic comment; and he said, ‘‘someone, he said, should remind Bill Daley, the Secretary of Commerce and overseer of the

Census Bureau, that if he counts people the way he wants to, his

brother, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, could find himself trying to

run a majority-minority city.’’ This is Hofeller talking. And Broder

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then explains this blunt reference to racial ethnic realities is not

uncommon on either side of the fight.

Among the thick file of scholarly papers Hofeller gave me was a

memo entitled, Why Conservatives Should Be Opposed to Census

Sampling; and it went on and said and warned in these papers— again a direct quote from the Republican papers—a census that

uses sampling and statistical adjustment will be the biggest victory

for big government, liberalism since the enactment of the Great Society. These statistical techniques will be used to add millions of

virtual people to big-city population centers, thus increasing the political power and levels of Federal Government funding in those jurisdictions.

Then came two pages of answers of how this outrage can be

stopped. And it outlines the courts, in Congress, the grassroots,

and they are trying to do this.

We have been to the Supreme Court. I understand there has

been another suit filed in Virginia against scientific sampling, and

I remind my colleagues that two budgets have been held up. Antisampling language was attached to a disaster relief bill, and yet we

have pages and pages of testimony that there is an undercount. We

either correct it when the professionals have told us how to correct

it or we deliberately don’t count people. That’s what this hearing

is about, whether we correct for the undercount or whether we do

not and therefore deliberately not count people.

Mr. MILLER. Thirty seconds.

Mr. RYAN. Mrs. Maloney, I just wanted to put for the record,

where I come from it’s not a Republican-Democrat issue. Democrat—liberal Democrat politicians from my home State—Senator

Herb Kohl, Mayor Norquist of Milwaukee—are also opposed to

sampling. We think it’s bad for our State. We think the scientific

community is out on this one. So I just wanted to say it’s not a conservative-liberal thing, Republican-Democrat thing everywhere. In

some places, it is. It’s just wrong to paint that very broad brush.

With that, I yield.

Mrs. MALONEY. May I respond? Because my name was mentioned.

Mr. MILLER. Let me make my statement, please. We are running

low on time. We can come back if you want.

I want to put in the record an editorial by Peter Skerry in last

Sunday’s Washington Post. It was titled, We’re Overstating the Importance of the Undercount. I think it’s a good explanation of the

fact we really are overstating the undercount.

What this hearing was about was whether we were going to use

statistical methods and adjustments to a census. There is real, legitimate concern that the method will not work at the block level

and to use it for the redistricting purposes—I think it was a good

hearing. There are still a lot of questions to be answered. We’ll be

discussing this, I’m sure, for the next months ahead, but there is

a real debate within the statistical community that the method will

not succeed, and that’s the reason we’ve got to be careful. As Justice Scalia said, there is a potential political manipulation.

On behalf of the subcommittee, I would like to thank you for appearing here today.

Mrs. MALONEY. May I respond?

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Mr. MILLER. We have a vote. We’ll come—if you want to come

back—— Mrs. MALONEY. I would like to respond to what was stated by

Mr. Ryan.

Mr. MILLER. We will then recess and come back after we have

a vote.

Mrs. MALONEY. I would like to respond now for 2 seconds.

Mr. MILLER. If you can do this in 15 seconds, go right ahead.

Otherwise, I’m going to adjourn it here.

Mrs. MALONEY. My dear friend and colleague from Wisconsin

mentioned that it was not a division between the Democratic and

Republican party, and he mentioned names in Wisconsin that supported his point of view. But there is a clear distinction between

the two parties on a national level, from the President who supports the use of modern scientific methods to the entire leadership

on the Democratic side.

And I would like to put into the record statements that have

been reported by the press quoting the Republican leadership that

they will not let it go forward. Newt Gingrich called it a dagger in

the heart of the Republican leadership, and Linder said even if the

court approved it he will stop it. When you say it is not a division

between the two parties, it is—— Mr. MILLER. Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY [continuing]. It is clear. It is in the record not

from my lips but from the independent press. I would like to put

those statements in the record.

Mr. MILLER. Mrs. Maloney, present the records right now. Come

on. We’re trying to get a vote together. You talk about all this away

from the partisanship, and all you want to do is go back to Newt

Gingrich who left Congress over 2 years ago, 3 years ago. This is

2000. We’re in the middle of the census.

On behalf of the Census Subcommittee, I want to thank you for

being here today.

I ask unanimous consent that all Members’ and witnesses’ opening statements be included in the record. Without objection, so ordered.

In case there are additional questions that Members have for our

witnesses, I ask unanimous consent that the record remain open

for 2 weeks for Members to submit questions for the record and

that the witnesses submit written answers as soon as practicable.

Without objection, so ordered.

Meeting adjourned.

Mrs. MALONEY. I put the quote in the record from John Linder,

the head of the RNC, now.

[Whereupon, at 12:04 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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