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A comment on The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. statistician. Parent comment

Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by bo1024 on Saturday October 17, 2020 @08:54AM (#24809600)
There are many reasons. They discuss poverty in the article. I would agree with cultural distrust of government officials. And very importantly, everything around the citizenship question/issue.

> The notion of these counts ever being used for enforcement — basically targeting high population, low citizenship-count blocks for ICE raids or whatever — that would be really, really problematic.

Stepping back, think in general about a government that wants to target, arrest, and deport certain groups of people, that is also going door to door and trying to establish records of who everyone is and where they live. Because of the bad optics of this, the US census has traditionally been extremely independent from law enforcement. The government has recently been attacking this barrier e.g. with the citizenship question and other things discussed in the article. Historically speaking, you might argue marginalized groups in such scenarios would be foolish to trust the census.

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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by WillPostForFood on Saturday October 17, 2020 @09:57AM (#24810002)
Because of the bad optics of this, the US census has traditionally been extremely independent from law enforcement. The government has recently been attacking this barrier e.g. with the citizenship question

Two points on history and tradition. The census was originally carried out by the US Marshals. That should indicate the importance and weight of the project. The citizenship question was part of the census until 2000 (1950 short form, 2000 long form).

If you are using the census to distribute voting power to states, and the distribution is based on count of citizens, not people, then it is a fair question to ask.

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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by conception on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:36AM (#24810247)
It’s not based on citizens, but on the number of free persons living there (and three fifths non free). This particular word choice is important s as the census and the house have always been based on who’s living in the state not based on citizens living there.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by spacemanmatt on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:15AM (#24810124)
The census is used to fairly apportion infrastructure to areas where people actually live. That this is done by representation is an artifact of our political system, not the Constitutional mandate that requires he census. It's not a fair question, as you say.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by spacemanmatt on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:23AM (#24810168)
You don't have to like it.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by matthewmcg on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:32AM (#24810226)
The distribution of voting power is based on population, not citizenship. Non-citizens need to be counted too.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by nonplussed on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:35AM (#24810244)
Only citizens can vote.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by hobs on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:37AM (#24810259)
It doesn't matter - when the document was written America had tons of non-citizens and those people were counted.

Slaves couldn't vote either, but in the famous compromise were counted as a portion of a person - the distribution of political power is why.

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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by kevinmchugh on Saturday October 17, 2020 @12:24PM (#24811099)
Citizens of a certain age, who meet certain residency and bureaucratic requirements and haven't lost the right due to criminal convictions.

Women only got the franchise 100 years ago, but had always been counted on the census.

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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by jfengel on Monday October 19, 2020 @09:52AM (#24826337)
And children still can't vote, and are also counted.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by solstice on Saturday October 17, 2020 @09:24AM (#24809797)
Dutch census recording religion enabled the Nazis to quickly round up the Jews living there a few years later during the occupation
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by hirundo on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:44AM (#24810307)
Data from the U.S. census of 1940 was used to round up Japanese Americans and put them into internment camps.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/03...

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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by pessimizer on Saturday October 17, 2020 @09:35AM (#24809872)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by TheAdamAndChe on Saturday October 17, 2020 @09:12AM (#24809713)
think in general about a government that wants to target, arrest, and deport certain groups of people

Yes. They are deporting people who didn't come into the country legally. Its important to have an accurate count of citizens in the country since that's who votes. There is an upcoming Supreme Court case that will determine if non citizens should be counted for House representation.

You may not agree with it, but it is important to know. With that said, I don't think ending the census early is the right way to handle this issue at all, it's just slimy.

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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by kevinmchugh on Saturday October 17, 2020 @09:29AM (#24809832)
The constitution never said to count the people who vote. If you wanted to know that, just count how many people vote.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by TheAdamAndChe on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:04AM (#24810044)
The constitution also doesn't preclude counting who is able to vote. The constitution places limits on the government, but we can add things that act within those bounds. Asking about citizenship falls within those bounds.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by WarOnPrivacy on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:51AM (#24810364)
Article 1 Clause 3 requires enumeration of all free persons.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by TheAdamAndChe on Saturday October 17, 2020 @11:08AM (#24810517)
Yes. Again, counting citizens does not also preclude counting free persons. We already gather data on peoples race and religion, proving that we can gather more data than just headcount, and citizenship information has already been gathered between 1950 and 2000.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by jimktrains2 on Saturday October 17, 2020 @05:05PM (#24813365)
Counting only citizens does preclude counting all free persons. (If you're speaking about counting all but considering citizenship a demographic, that's legal and used to be done iirc, but was dropped as it was feared it would disincentivize non-citizen being counted. The recent court case about the citizenship question was settled by the courts because of administrative procedure, not the legality of the question.)

Moreover, collecting demographics data is orthogonal and I'm not sure why you're bringing it up.

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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by jimktrains2 on Saturday October 17, 2020 @09:27AM (#24809814)
The constitution specifically says the census is a count of all "free Persons", not only citizens. Obviously SCOTUS will weigh in now, but I think it's important to realize the actual wording of what the census is.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by kevinmchugh on Saturday October 17, 2020 @09:31AM (#24809845)
14th amendment drops the "free"
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by jimktrains2 on Saturday October 17, 2020 @09:47AM (#24809934)
While also striking the 3/5 compromise, so I don't think it changes the reading.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by cafard on Saturday October 17, 2020 @09:45AM (#24809922)
It uses the term "free Persons" but the context is "their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons".

So "all other Persons", i.e. slaves, were counted.

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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by jimktrains2 on Saturday October 17, 2020 @09:48AM (#24809943)
Well, the 3/5 compromise has been removed, but even still are you arguing that immigrants aren't people or aren't free, i.e. not slaves.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by Broken_Hippo on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:47AM (#24810329)
Prisoners aren't free, but they still use infrastructure and I'm pretty sure they are supposed to be counted in the census.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by jimktrains2 on Saturday October 17, 2020 @11:55AM (#24810887)
They are, because they are free in that they are not slaves. Prisoners still have a plethora of constitutional rights.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by Broken_Hippo on Saturday October 17, 2020 @03:55PM (#24812707)
The amendment against slavery excludes prisoners: Sometimes, they are, indeed, slaves.

And yeah, they have rights. But they don't have the right to freedom as we know it nor do they have the right not to be slaves.

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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by jimktrains2 on Saturday October 17, 2020 @04:34PM (#24813087)
You act as though there is a single freedom, which is not the case by any means. The amendment carves out specific exemptions for prisoners for certain things, but that doesn't make them chattal slaves, nor does it remove the rest of their rights, e.g. cruel and unusual punishment, ability to have representation, or have their speech curtailed.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by Broken_Hippo on Sunday October 18, 2020 @06:37AM (#24816836)
I'm not sure who would classify prisoners as free, though. Classifying prisoners as free is warping what most folks would consider free. You can have rights and not be free. POW's are supposed to have certain rights, too, but that's hardly free. You can have rights without being free. Not being chattal slaves doesn't make you free either, nor does it mean you aren't a temporary slave.

In general, folks would agree that if you are in a situation where you are forced to eat at certain times, possibly only use toilets or showers at certain times, can be used as labor with little to no pay, and can never roam freely at the behest of armed guards that can shoot you, you aren't free. The main exception to some of this is military, but for now, this is something folks choose and some countries' soldiers are more free than the ones in the states.

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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by jimktrains2 on Sunday October 18, 2020 @12:16PM (#24818906)
I'm not going to continue this discussion as you're unwilling to understand that we're discussing free vs non-free as in non-chattel-slave vs chattel-slave, a.k.a. the ownership of another human being. The state does not own prisoners. Prisoners continue to have a plethora of constitutionally protected rights. Prisoners are counted in the census.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by CyberRabbi on Saturday October 17, 2020 @12:17PM (#24811045)
Your interpretation would imply they intended non-citizen native Americans to be counted in the Census.
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Re:The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. s... by jimktrains2 on Saturday October 17, 2020 @01:24PM (#24811538)
The original text and the 14th amendment both excluded untaxed indians from the apportionment for the house of representatives.

So, they could ask to be counted, but there is no mandate to count them.

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