Why The Census Matters Now More Than Ever
Time|May 29,2017

THE QUESTION OF HOW MANY MEN, women and children live within our borders seems an academic one. A factoid, easily answered by the U.S. Census Bureau, which, by constitutional decree, updates its tally every decade using an army of 635,000 “enumerators” who are employed to walk door-to-door, clipboards in hand.

Haley Sweetland Edwards
Why The Census Matters Now More Than Ever

Of course, the Census results are more than trivia. They inform the very foundation of our electoral process: how state and federal political districts are drawn; which Americans are counted for representation; and how federal dollars, many of which are allocated per capita, are spent. “It is vital, it is critical, that the public has confidence in the Census,” says Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former staff director of the House Census Oversight Subcommittee. “Anything that compromises that compromises the whole mission.”

And so when Census Bureau director John Thompson announced on May 9 that he will leave his post at the end of June, it caused a stir. Thompson, who served at the bureau for more than 30 years, was expected to stay on through 2017. But colleagues say he was hobbled by intense pressure from Congress about cost overruns on a new Internet-based questionnaire and by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s wavering confidence in him. (In a statement to TIME, the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census, declined to elaborate.)

This story is from the May 29,2017 edition of Time.

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This story is from the May 29,2017 edition of Time.

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