The census is not sexy, but it is important

July 1, 11:17 AMPolitical Buzz ExaminerRyan Witt

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You will never confuse a story about the census with a Mark Sanford interview or another breaking news story containing details of the Michael Jackson death.  Still, the census is probably more important than both stories even if it lacks the sex, drugs, and pop of the Sanford and Jackson stories.

The census happens every ten years and is mandated to be done by the U.S. Constitution.  The reason is simple, how do we know how many representatives in Congress Texas gets in comparison to Oklahoma unless we know how many people each state has?  So every ten years the commerce department is put in charge of hiring some 60,000 workers to literally go door-to-door and count people so we can find out which states will gain representative and lose representatives.  This could also effects the number of votes each state gets in the electoral college which can influence presidential races as the traditionally republican states gained more electoral votes after the 2000 census.

So why all the fuss?  Well it turns out the census is actually really complicated and by the best estimates some people are getting counted twice and some are not getting counted at all.  According to a Time article by Amy Sullivan some 4 million white Americans were counted twice in the last census while 8 million minorities were not not counted at all.  It seems that minorities and immigrants tend to live in neighborhoods which are more difficult to count.  Some immigrants and minorities will simply not open their door to a census taker for fear of crime or how the information gathered might be used.  To fix this democrats want Obama to take more control and use statistical sampling to even out the numbers and more appropriately reflect the minorities.  Republicans, meanwhile, smell an ACORN-filled conspiracy and are doing everything to stop the democrats including blocking Obama's nominee to run the census.

This debate could be crucial as it will determine whether many states like Michigan and Massachusetts (traditionally democratic) lose representatives and electoral votes while others like Utah and Arizona (traditionally republican) gain votes.So some time in the middle of your Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Mark Sanford stories I would encourage you to pay some attention to the census.  Stephen Colbert does a very good job of comically describing the republican position in the following video.