Today's local newspaper has an opinion piece masquerading as a news story. (But then seems like all local newspapers do some of that these days.) The gist of the piece was that Texas needs to figure out how to "count" more of its residents in next year's census. We should do this to avoid "losing" one billion or more dollars in federal largesse and entitlements over the course of the following decade. The article mostly addressed two aspects of the issue. It quoted various "experts" who assert that Hispanics and presumably some other minorities are undercounted by the census. There was some discussion of why this occurs even though full counting would ostensibly benefit those who are undercounted, lavishing them with federal dollars for various public service purposes, including healthcare and other federal aid. The article also mentioned in passing that apportionment of U S House seats is based on the dicennial census and that Texas can expect to gain seats in a couple of years.
This article, however, failed to explore indepth the reasons for the undercounting. It also totally ignored some realworld realities. If the main purpose of the census, besides getting a reasonably accurate estimate of total number of inhabitants of the country at a specific point in time, is to decide how to divide up the "pie", well that has no impact on the size of the pie or whether or not it grows. Whether Texas "gets" 10% or 11% of all available federal dollars ends up being great for Texas. But it doesn't change the potential size of the available pool of federal dollars.
I think I will quit with this introduction. Future posts will look at the two separate issues: Why and how we historically haven't had good census counts in Texas (if that is in fact true); and the bigger picture if Texas were magically able to count all its inhabitants next time - (Does this assume other states are not similarly attempting the same thing? If they are successful, then we don't gain percentage share, do we?)
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2 comments:
So, why has TX had continuing problems getting an accurate count?
1. Undetermined # of Hispanic Texans avoid being counted either because they are illegal immigrants or perhaps weren't sure of their status.
2. Some who aren't illegal but who perhaps didn't wish the authorities to know who they were and where they were would conceal their existence & residential status.
Those reasons are somewhat obvious. The next ones are more obscure.
3. Many people, including the Republicans who have controlled TX state government for a number of years, believe that success at counting would result in larger numbers of new potential voters who would lean heavily Democratic.
As a result, state officials may only pay lip service to the goal of "counting everyone".
4. And, related to reason #3, white, Anglo-Texans up in the panhandle and throughout the rural stretches of Texas also don't have as much of a vested interest in "counting everyone". Accurate counts might well shift the boundaries of state legislative districts even more toward the southern border and the urban areas, costing the "rural white" areas of Texas representation in the state legislature.
5. One other factor not so much affecting the totality of the census count as the distribution throughout the state is that current and historic procedures call for persons domiciled in state prisons are counted as "residents" of the county/town where the prison facility is located. This inflates the census results for those counties and towns, usually at the expense of the Houston, Dallas Metroplex, and San Antonio areas. But, of course, the state representatives from the counties of the ten largest prison facilities would oppose any change to these counting/reporting procedures.
So while we may lament alleged loss of federal funds that get allocated based on census results there are many, many Texans who are more interested in maintaining the status quo of the political structure.
intriguing...looking forward to more...hope to see some of this comment you made in next post, else all gets confusing switching through post and comment...
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