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[inaudible conversations] >> taking a live now to the american enterprise institute in washington d.c., hosting a discussion about the 2027 says in the decision to include a question about citizenship. 17 states, the district of columbia and six cities are suing the u.s. government. they say the citizenship question is currently institutional. >> -- welcome all of you and your c-span audience to making the 2020 cents to succeed. when asked about moderate today's event, responded enthusiastically. i know that it is virtually impossible for many of my colleagues to do the important work they do without the date of the census provides. the same is true for policymakers and for the business community across the country. any opportunity to talk about the value of our premier statistical agency is always worthwhile. there are additional reasons for having this panel discussion now. the dress reversal for the 2020 cents a is underway in

providence county, rhode island. this is the only place to the census is running a full test that they didn't have the funds to run into other cities -- to other areas, underfunding is a serious issue. there are other concerns i hope our panelists will touch on today the president challenges to the senses and feature was. there are public concerns about the information security and privacy as we learned last week. declining response rates and information next ocean and rapidly changing technologies. different language requirements with the diverse population. complex living arrangements and finally mobile population. this is the first census that will have an online auction. finally, there is the inclusion of the question on citizenship data is and what it could do to the response rate. i hope our panelists can touch on some of these issues today. let me say a word about each one

of them. they'll each speak for five to 10 minutes and then have an open conversation. john thompson will speak first as executive director for the council of professional associations on federal statistics and more important for this panel, that way for a director of the census where he served from august 2013th until june 2017. he introduced the director's blog which i read whenever it appeared. he was formally president at the university of chicago. diane shows amuck as director of the institute for policy research and faculty fellow at northwestern and the marker walker alexander professor of social policy there. director of the hamilton project of routines that is an initiative to promote broad-based economics. pekoske as manager of the heritage foundation's election law reform initiatives and the rico follow for legal and

judicial studies. he writes about civil rights, election integrity, immigration and government regulation. he served for two years at the federal election commission and before that he worked at the justice department. my colleague here at aei is director of economic policy studies here in the john g searle scholar at aei. mike oversees the broad portfolio with his work and economic policy, financial, poverty studies, tax policy, energy economics and health care policy. mike worked at the census bureau. we will begin today with john thompson. >> i'm delighted to be here. the five minutes but the census in context to describe the readiness so i'll attempt to do that. i think everyone knows that the

census is constitutionally mandated article i, section two, including rear portion of the congress, drawing a big district by congressional districts and local voting districts. it is used to allocate over $600 billion a year of federal funds annually. it is essential for state, local and tribal governments to make many decisions. it supports business investment in local communities. and finally, is used to ensure the accuracy of virtually every demographic survey collected in the united states, which would include the current population survey, which predicts month-to-month change in unemployment when the national health interview survey which measures the health of our country and the american community. that's why there's so many concerns about the accuracy of

the census because of all the important uses. so to talk about the 2020 census readiness, it's important to understand that census process has evolved in some ways and in others it hasn't. beginning in the 270, the census bureau went to e-mail back senses and that is essentially being used until today, questioners e-mail back, electronically capture the information. and then you go out and collect the information from those households that do not self respond. until today, that operation and as our country has grown more diverse over the years since 1970, the only way that a paper and pencil operation can be employed is you have to add more and more people to it and that

is why if you look at the cost of the senses, over the years they go up faster than any rate of inflation and faster than population growth. again, we are using an operation to try to do something very difficult. so, for the 2020 census, the idea was to modernize and use automation intelligently. that one from developing the address using spatial technologies so you don't have to walk every street in the country to use the internet as the primary response option in the census bureau trust we realize don't have access to the internet may provide those households. they also allow people to call in for the first time and get their information over the phone. importantly, the census bureau is using automation and mobile technology to deploy the work force to collect the information from those households that don't

self respond and they are going to be using iphone's and i patted to do this. it introduces tremendous efficiencies into the operation. in fact from the census bureau has estimated in 2014 if they receive the resources needed, they could have reduced the cost of collecting the 2020 census from 17 billion which would be the process in 2022 a little over 12 billion that would have been about $5 million. however, in if you look at the amount of money the census bureau asked for in the amount they receive, 2012 through 2017, the census bureau was underfunded by $200 million. this forced the census bureau to make a number of decisions.

they had to do for some operations. you just heard they had to reduce three tests to one, which was a function of this. they also had to defer, this is very important. we can talk about this later. they had to defer committees on advertising in partnership program, which is essentially how they achieve accuracy in the census. i think the good news is that the census bureau and their athletic 18 budget did receive more money of over a billion dollars more. this really indicates bipartisan support i believe for the census bureau and will help them tremendously to overcome difficulties that might be imposed on them this fall when there will undoubtedly be a continuing resolution. so it was a very, very good move for the census are still needs a lot more money.

so finally, let me conclude by noting that recently the census commerce secretary roth decided to get a citizenship question to the census. i am five other directors of the census bureau have written a letter which is publicly available, expressing concerns and the essence is that we don't believe and i'll speak for myself right now, we don't believe that there has been adequate testing such question and there is a great risk to including it on the census. and under count that resulted count that result in the census will be with the census bureau for 10 years. it's very important we have that census. what i will conclude. >> can you tell us how about it is going?

the project management review and a mention at the time herself response rate was 36%. they said that was on track with what they are looking for. the next big step in the census bureau said that their automation was ready to go. we need to see the automation and how it works to make sure that it does work. the good news there is the gao will be there looking independently and they will be writing publicly, so everyone will know. >> thank you. thanks so much. it is a pleasure to be back here. michael and i wrote a paper about a year ago were we try to lay out a framework for why it is so important to have well functioning and census bureau and other statistical agencies. those are very important to the

united states. michael and i will each talk a little more about that. in terms of the census, we are successful and accurate census is crucial for a number of reasons. in terms of the number of seats each state has in the house of representatives. but also the distribution of billions of dollars in federal funding every year to local communities, infrastructure, vital services at hospitals, schools. we are facing increasing challenges to collect enough in cultural, linguistic and economic diversity makes it harder to enumerate everyone. on top of that is increasing distrust of the government. as a know in the past, the census had cost overruns and they came up with a very innovative plan to try to keep accuracy high, but also reduce cost this time.

they are planning on entering data collection methods in his answers. putting internet as well as the questionnaire that will make it more streamlined down the road. by making a smart investment in technology messaging and advertising to accurately account a population that's increasingly hard to count makes a lot of sense. of course you need to make those investments today, not two years from now. if we wait until it is too late, we will end up pouring a lot more money on the problem to make sure we get up to the accuracy that we need. the first time really modernizing the senses then we need these tests. i think everyone will continue to point out with arty scaled-back these tests. it is very important that desire cannot did with fidelity and

that we can troubleshoot. something that not a lot of people understand as we are not just talking about undercutting. it is not just immigrants although to be sure, i predict that adding citizenship question will increase the cost of this because more people will not want to answer this. we also need to worry about undercutting our miscounting when we are moving now to something that involves the internet, is predictable that we are less likely to be able to participate in that. also, statisticians tell us it is very difficult to count people that have multiple residences. we don't do that with great fidelity, we'll end up not just undercounting but miscounting and the real consequences not only the number of people in the house of representatives, but also dollars spent.

so just to conclude, you know, we've heard a little bit about the need for smart investments today and i agree that the census bureau has been underfunded. we are also concerned about leadership. it has long benefited from exceptional, bipartisan high qualified leadership and we need to make sure that we fill this role with someone who's highly qualified and nonpartisan, who will be with active at both sides of the aisle. >> thinks. diane, you mention it you mention the online or internet option. d.c. that is enhancing participation? >> certainly in the long run it should. it is time that we modernize the census, that we used this approach. it is just going to require a lot of testing and understanding of who we can reach better and who do we have to do more following up with? >> any privacy concerns? >> we will get into that for

sure. >> i want to thank you for inviting me to be here today. michael actually asked me to talk about the greatest controversy over the census recently and that is the announcement in the citizenship question to the census. now i think a lot of the criticism again to the administration for doing that is unfair and unwarranted. i want to give you a quote from the president and the quote is for the purpose also of exactly distinguishing the increased population by birth and immigration, we should know their the respective numbers of native citizens and aliens. all of you think i was just quoting president donald trump. you're incorrect. i was just quoting thomas jefferson who said that in 181820 the census followed that recommendation and added a citizenship question to the

census on foreigners not naturalized. i give you that history because if you listen to the hysterical claims by opponents, you would probably not realized the trump administration is not adding a citizenship question, but reagan dating a citizenship question on the senses. that question was can instantly asked on different censuses until 1950 when the u.s. census bureau switched to sending out a short form and a longform. those of you altering the audience will remember that about one in six households used to get the longform as opposed to the short form. the longform has a citizenship question on it. as demonstrated by the longform for the 2000 census, which is not that long ago. after the 2000 census, the longform was discontinued in the senses bureau switch to what is called the american community

service. this is set down continuously, but it only goes to households and provides basically estimates of demographic characteristics, which makes this nationwide problematical. the acs which has been used since then and is used today has always had a citizenship question. if you want to download the 2018 form come you will find a citizenship question on the acs and what the commerce department said they are going to do is add the very same citizenship question back on to the census. keep this in mind. it does not ask you whether you are here illegally or not. simply asks, are you a citizen of the united states and important for everyone to understand there is a federal law that bars the census bureau from sharing individualized information from the senses with any other government agents he were publicizing it and not as a

criminal violation of the law. the fear that somehow this information is going to get sent to dhs, for example, is just not true. by the way, when i hear people talk about how this will make the response rate go down, there is no evidence this is going to make the response rate go down. there's no evidence it has caused the response rate to go down to the acs reared in fact, the acs if you look at it, it has a lot more intrusive questions on it. i'll give you some examples later they would've said people a lot more than citizenship questions. if you look at the memo that was put out by the commerce department, and dan from the deputy there now with the nielsen polling firm hurtled commerce that when they add to their surveys, and they have no appreciable decrease in response

rates. another quote from there that i think is correct is this from kevin dan kelly of the commerce department. even if there's impact on responses, the value of more complete data from surveying the entire population outweigh such concerns. acs only goes to 138 households. since this data is used for everything from enforcing the voting rights act for citizenship data is essential to the distribution of federal funding. we've been in a debate now for 10 years. does anyone doubt that we should have accurate data on a citizenship population if we want to we want a house in informed debate and come up with a remedy? finally, what i know will surely make the opponents of the ration and adding this question is that

the trump administration is following recommendations by the united nations. the recommendations for population and housing census 2017 coming you will find they recommend a citizenship question on their census surveys ranging from australia to germany to indonesia, i'll ask this question on their census only in the u.s. is this considered at all controversial and it shouldn't be. >> thank you. i expect to get some some disagreement from some disagreement for my next panelist, michael gray. >> typically one of the problems of speaking last is there is not much left to say. but that is a nice segue to provide a contrasting view on the citizenship question. i am concerned about the impact the citizenship question will have on response rates. it is of course the case that we

currently ask about citizenship. it is also much less salient exercise in data collection. the census bureau has found evidence that people in immigrant and minority communities today are concerned about the 2020 census in a way that they are not concerned about the american community survey. you know, the reasons for that are easy enough to figure out i think. first, the decennial sentence is a major undertaking. knock on every door, count every person. the government takes out a lot of money to advertise the exercises in order to get people to comply with the survey in the constitution. it is something that people notice. people pay much less attention to the american community survey and they should pay less

attention. so it is hard to kind of map what happens with the american community survey and to expect that people respond in the same way. it is also true that in conducting tests for the 2020 census, the senses here has found that members of immigrant and minority communities are concerned about answering the census at all. this concert was registered before there was a decision made about the citizenship question. so even apart from whether or not the 2020 decennial has a citizenship question, the census bureau has found that members of immigrant and minority communities are concerned about answering the 2020 census and the reasons for the reasons were that are not terribly hard to understand either. there's been a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from washington. there has been a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric coming

from the president of the united states. both after he took office and when he was a presidential candidate. there has been a contentious debate for sure in the status of the dreamers and all sorts of things have kind of blood to this moment where people in some immigrant and minority communities are concerned about answering questions in general and it is quite reasonable based on the evidence we have to conclude that they will be even more reticent to answer a government form that asks about their citizenship status. now, why should we care about that? an important reason we should care about that is if people are less likely to answer the question, the cost of the decennial sent this goes way up. the senses is in the constitution. the bureau does not have a choice about whether or not it intends to enumerate the population.

that means if you don't enter the online form, if you don't fill out your form, the census bureau does not to say okay we tried our best. instead, they send someone to your house. they knock on the door and say i'm here for the government. i have a few questions for you. that doesn't go well all the time. people slammed the door. .. for people to gather the information in person. also affects the accuracy of the census, and that has ripple effects for the next ten years. the 2020 census will be used to benchmark the current population

survey, other economic surveys for years and years, and any small air florida benchmarking will be with us for a decade and small errors compound over time. very important decisions are made using those data sources. decisions about interest rates. if the federal reserve looks at the current population survey and the current population survey mismeasures unemployment a little bit and the fed tightens too nsa or the fed lets the economy run hot too long, billions and billions and billions of dollars are at stake. if social security, which adjusts its payments based on inflation, if those inflation measures are off just a little bit, billions and builts of dollars at stake. private sector businesses rely on data that are bench marked

against the decennial census to make critical decisions, if the database a little inaccurate, the costses compound over time. so small errors have big effects when you consider how important the decennial sense -- census and is how long we have to live with it. those are the costs of potentially including this question. what is the benefit? i don't see much of one at all. we have accurate, valid information on citizenship that comes from other less visible data sources. we have been able to rely on that for decades and decades. so to me there's no clear reason to do this, and when you have a

proposition where there's very little, if any, benefit in significant costs that says we shouldn't do that particular thing. so, my hope is that congress intervenes and keeps that question off the decennial, and i think it would be better for business and better for policymakers if -- ultimately better for taxpayers if that ends up being the case. >> thank you, mike. and john and diane, i want you to jump. in first a few questions for hans. how do you respond to mike's points bat the sillens of the ecs versus the census, the cast, accuracy and benefit. >> the problem withi the acs is that it only goes to one of 38 households and they do estimating, and extrapolating to fig out how it applies to the rest of the country. that causes problem in, for

example, enforce0. the voting rights act and i know mountain that because i worked the justice department enforcing the voting right act. if you're enforcing section 2 of the voting rights action, which prevents and prohibits racial discrimination in voting, and you are, for example, filing a lawsuit against a state or a county or city, claiming they have diluted the vote by the way they have packed the particular districts, and you are suing on behalf of, say, hispanic voters ex-if you're coming one with a remedy, the remedy is to come if with a district in which minority voters can elect their candidate of choice. the way you do that is you have to ensure, for example, if you're suing on behalf of hispanic voters, when you create a district for them, they have at least 50% plus one of the population in that district so they can elect their candidates of choice.

well, if you just use population and you only have a citizenship rate of 60%, putting in a 60% hispanic population won't give you majority of hispanic voters. site essential to have citizenship data and the cs because it goes to limit number of house hold, doesn't give you enough data. you can look at u.s. supreme court decision where this was an issue, and the supreme court talked about the lack of data in this area on this. a census question will bet us that for the whole country, and i respeed what the commerce depth said which is there's no empirical evidence this will cause downturn in the response rate, and if it did we would know about it from the acs, and and they've produced no such

data. >> dianne, john? >> i would like to make a couple points. one, the theory behind the acs -- it was replacing the long form because it was going produce more accurate data than the long form. so the acs has two products. one product that comes 0 out every year and another product that comes out on an average over five years. misusing the term average probably but you can think of it as a five-year anka that produces data for small areas, that have the same level of accuracy as the census long form, so the american community survey flies data that is the same quality for citizenship that we have observed since 1950. we have been able to do that. i thing i will stop -- think i will stop there.

>> dianne. >> i think my primary concern is about the accuracy of the census overall and that it sounds like hans disagrees whether this will drive up costs but there's this -- this add significant risk. i'm persuaded by michael's arguments that this will probably either reduce the accuracy of the census or drive up the cost, and i think the benefit of what we get, over and above the acs,s quite small. >> mike. >> well, i don't think i have much more to add. i do think it's -- again, just to repeat myself. very difficult to compare with the acs survey to the decennial survey. not everybody knows the acs happens. everybody knows the decennial survey happens.

the u.s. bureau does not spend thousands of dollarses to help in compliance on the acs as the same way with the decennial census. bureau found that community leaders in some cases, are telling people in their communities not to answer the decennial census because of some of the anti-immigrant rhetoric that has been coming from the administration and the president, and coming from washington generally. that does not happen with the american communities survey. the american communities survey gives us the information that we need to do things like enforce the voting rights act articulation american community service question's citizenship is as accurate as the previous question that was asked once every ten years, on citizenship, before the american communities

survey was adopted. so we're not luigs anything by way of accuracy. the short, simple ten or so questions decennial census has not included a question on citizenship for decades and we have been fine in enforcing -- well, maybe not fine but we have not needed to add a citizenship way -- question to the short form tone force the voting rights act. >> we have some pretty profound disagreement and probably have some questions from the audience but the citizenship question. i'd like to turn to john now to ask just about how some of the kinds of questions they census has been asking over time have einvolved in terms of the complex sis we have in this society today. the multiple languages, complex living arrangements. mobile population. how was the ken -- census coping when you were there and how are we coaching today. >> i think you're hitting on

something that every statistical agency and every company that produces data is facing, that is, our population is becoming much more diverse, much more complex to measure, and so you have seen an emergence of a variety of techniques to reach out in new ways to individual us. you've also seen questions that have evolved more to measure the population. so, for example, the census relationship way now asks questions upon same-sex marriage or same-sex partners, and didn't before. so it's -- you see an evolution of the questions we ask that parallels our society. >> dianne? >> mostly back on -- that makes everything more expensive. we have to think about how to measure this, test how to measure it, et cetera, et cetera. so in order to stay accurate we

need to make the wise investments. >> john, can you tell us bow how it actually happens? seems it's like mountaining an army to do a u.s. census every ten years. how many people are involved? >> so, i think the peak right now the census bureau is looking at hiring somewhere between 300 and 500,000 temporary workers in 2020 to collect the information from those that don't self-respond, and they'll have a -- set up 250 temporary offices to manage those people from. so it's a -- and they have to set up the information technology and the infrastructure to manage that kind of operation. >> how many languages? >> so, i'm not -- when i left they were looking at having the questionnaire in five languages, and they'll provide assistance

up to probably 100 languages that they need. so they're very attuned to the languages of our population. >> that's impressive. we certainly heard a lot last week when mr. zuckerberg testified but information security. how concerned should meshes be by that privacy and information security in the census. >> you're the point man here, john. >> he know the census bureau, when i was there, and still are, that information security is their top priority in terms of building systems. so, they do -- they work with experts in the field. they work with the department of homeland security, with the national institutes of science and technology, private sector companies, and before any system is implemented, it has to undergo some very serious testing, including penetration

testing by an outside person. that being said, in the world of cyber security you can never stop being worried. you also have to be working very, very hard at that. so, i fell comfortable that the census bureau was addressing the cyber challenges but something you can't stop doing. >> other comments on this point? >> one thing i would point out is that throughout our history the census bureau has been very good in keeping the information confidential with one very big exception. the very big exception i'm sure people know about is the fact that franklin roosevelt, in essence, ignored the law and they used census data during world war ii to locate japanese-americans and to go after them. that was a violation of the law and shouldn't have happened but it did. that's the only real example. significant example of census breaking the federal rules about

confidentiality of census data. >> in my world of survey research, we worry a loud about declining response rates, and the wonderful work done by the pew research center shows that, for example, about 20 years ago we had 36% average response rate for public offend surveys. that's now down to -- public opinion surveys. now down to 27%, and i wonder if you could give us clues how the response rate has declined. john, we turn to you first. >> the self-response rates have dropped off. going back to 1970, the self-response rates were in the high 70s. in the more modern times, 199, 2000, 2010. the response rates were more in the 60 to 65 percentile range. >> we would love that in the survey world. >> but if you look at some

surveys like the current population survey, one of the highest voluntary response rates surveys that the federal government conducts, you can see a steady dropoff in response since 2010, and it's been a real problem for the census bureau. they're working very hard to address it, but it's just getting harder and harder to convince people to respond. >> you have taken surveys about why people aren't responding, and, dianne, you can weigh in here, too. i. >> want to that one first. >> go ahead. >> i want to make sure that everyone understands when we do public opinion surveyed or the current population survey you have to have a benchmark to compare the response and nonresponse. that benchmark is the united states census, which is critically important we get an accurate census in the year 2020. this measuring stick that out of

these other surveys are measured against and adjusted for, when there's nonresponse, when there's sampling sampling and ng errors. so all the more reason to make sure this conducts to the level we need. >> i might mex because this often surprise members of the public and surprised me. often actually get calls from people who are upset but the american community survey and not upset but the citizenship question. they're concerned about thank you details income questions. most people don't like the idea to tell the government what their income us. what i -- you al should know is there's actually a first statute that makes it a crime for you to refuse to answer a census. you can be fined up to $500. some people might think that's worth it to not have to answer the questions but fined $500 and there's some reported cases,

most of them very old, where people were prosecuted by the justice department for refusing to answer the census. so, that is always an option the government has. just have not exercised that option very often. >> we have i think 15 minutes left today and i think it's time to turn to your questions. please identify yourself and ask a question. start over here and please wait for a microphone. hi, andrew from george washington university. john, my understanding is that the secretaries announcement of what is on the questionnaire is really the -- it's his proposal and there's a process now of census -- submitting to the office of management and budget, omb, through the paperwork reduction act has to approve the 2020 census as it approves every fed survey, and i think we should see that announce

independent a couple of weeks and the public has 60 days to tell census what it thinks of this design, and then census submits it to omb and ten the public gets another opportunity later in the year. can you describe the process 'opeople and ombs power to decide what goes on the survey form. that is for you. for hans, i think you said two things that are incorrect. one is that what the census did in 1940 was legal. there was a law that was passed that allowed the. may have ben morally wrong but is was legal. and the fine for not answering the census is 500 bucks for lying, it's up to $5,000 because in the 80s, congress passed crime control legislation that overrode statutes that were specific to individual agencies.

so if grew token cuss web site it says people can we find up to $5,000. the third thing hans -- sorry -- i'll be done -- is that there is actually a census broke bought evidence regarding recent, as in the past year, fear's respondent dozen answering the citizenship question. so there was a presentation with descriptions in great detail, raised to the level of alarm among census staff, that people were lying, people were walking out of the room, people were visibly sweating and this was not mentioned by the secretary. so, the census internally has seen evidence of -- compared of three years ago of a change of people's attitude regarding the citizenship question. can you responsible? >> andrea drew, you were just

about right on with the process. the paperwork reduction act requires every information collection to be approved by the office of information regulatory affairs at the office of management and budget, and so the census bureau will put out the questionnaire for public comment. that's the questionnaire they'll use in 2020. and they'll have 60 days, then i believe sometime around september-october, that whole package, including the comments good, to the office of information and regulatory affair and they can approve or disapprove any of the questions on theres they'll have documentation and that's why the questions are important in the research. so that's the next step in the process. >> on the process question, i will answer that by mentioning the fact that more than a dozen

states heave sued the government over the citizenship question. i think those suits will all fail and the reason is that if you look at the constitution, the power to conduct the census is given to the federal government, not the states, and the federal government has delegated their specific statute that gives the commerce secretary the power to, quote, determine the inquiries on the census form. so the states don't have any say in this which and their claims are without merit. you talk about an neck toll to evidence. there's no -- anecdotal evidence. there's no empire tall evidence. the nielsen center says they've seen in reduction in response rate and again, i've said this more than once and repeat it, the census bureau sends out the acs all the time with a citizenship question on it, and if it had any empirical evidence

the citizenship reduced the response, and they didn't. >> thank you. my name is -- i just wanted to ask a question, trying to find if the census, knowing what has happened with the election meddling and what happened on facebook, have you go ahead and open a window that will try to prevent what could be happening in this census bureau? could it be some kind of external meddling in the census? knowing what is happening now.

>> john or dianne, is the census prepared for this possibility? >> so, i think part of the issue for the census bureau is anytime they're a breach of public confidence, it falls on all of the different agencies us collecting data, including the census bureau. so the census bureau has a heard job in communicating, which they will, the data they have is confidential and they have processes in place to protect the integrity of the dat dark but every time something like that happens, it makes it harder and harder to get the message out. >> dianne? >> i think similar answer, which is that we need to make she's investments in technology to make the whole thing more productive, but alongside that we need make shower we're doing everything we can to secure the

data, especially online. the census bureau has a terrific track report historically in terms of confidentiality extremely seriously, data security extremely seriously, and we need to get somebody who is an expert in those specific things to testify to that. but i have confidence in the bureau. >> a question over here and then over here, we good to that one in the corn first and then to you. please identify evers. >> peg clerks congressional correspondent for the hispanic outlook. two questions about -- it seems loosey-goosey stuff houston census. the one this number of lat teen in the community, hispanics, which are not a race, recognized by the census bureau so how do they come to this? i understand just be last names but you get swung lime congressman creighto says he

guts stuff off the time. how do they term that the hispanic community, and the latino vote, and along with that is for a long time they said they could not estimate the numbers of illegal immigrants in the country, but suddenly we get this number in concrete, 11 million. that has not changed despite soso called record numbers of deportation. how do they arrive at that? >> john? iright now the census asks two questions. the first question asks about hispanic origin, and the second question -- it has different categories to check. and the second question asks about race. part of the issue that the census bureau had been dressing of the decade was understanding

some of the issues associated with an "other race" category and hispanics was sometimes marked that category. they had done some significant research on combining the two questions going they concluded that was the optimum way to ask about racial ethnicity. however they have not been able to implement that combined question technology because you the office of management and budget has not changed the 1997 standards on race andth missionty that requires two questions -- and ethnicity that requires two questions. >> it's self-reported and nobody is looking at last names. they are asking people how you identify -- [inaudible question] >> it's how anybody chooses to answer the question. >> it's self-responding. it's how individuals choose to answer the questions. [inaudible question]

>> the census bureau, win through, was an estimating the illegal population so i'd have to defer to my colleague. >> that number comes from the department of homeland security and i'm not sure how they come up with the number. >> question here in the middle. please identify yourself. >> karen. my question is i think i hard you said there's going to be an electronics distribution of the census? is that correct? >> online. >> online. >> then send su bureau will send out -- census bureau will send out an invitation by mail to respond over the internet. they're not going to send e-mails to people saying, respond. >> thank you for that

clarification. >> there's so much focus on this legal/illegal question versus the fact that not everyone is electronically literate and that cuts across a lot of population, aging, you know, poor, people who don't have access to computers, et cetera. i would think that in this day and age would have an even bigger impact on response rate and the skewing of responses. >> so, let me just say a little something about that. the census bureau will mail out -- they have two ways they invite people to respond. one is called internet first, which you get a letter or post card that says please respond by the internet. and at in point in the process,

if people don't respond, they will get a paper questionnaire. the second method is called internet choice and they identify areas in the country, using the american community survey and other data, where they believe that most people would rather respond by paper, and for those areas they mail out a questionnaire. about 20% of households in the united states will get a questionnaire the mail and then have a chance, either respond by the internet or fill out the paper questionnaire, and if they want to call in they can call in and give their interview of the telephone. this the first for the 2020 census. [inaudible question] -- i would be concerned that the response rate among certain

populations will be here us because we'll just good tower computers and respond, and other people -- i understand they have other options, but this is quick. >> so i think there's one reason why the end-to-end test is very important so we are understand before we field the full 2020 census, who is going on to respond and who is not, and what cases do we need to send the 300,000 to 500,000 enumerators to the home to people people respond? in order to make this step forward, which i think is needed for financial reasons, and to modernize the census, we need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the new approach but we only have one and should have had three. >> there's a question in the back here. >> my question is for hans. in your opinion what is the effect of having the citizenship

question -- i'm think about the, california, they implement policies to attract population of illegal immigrants versus alabama, let's say, when if you count all of that illegal immigrant population in california, that will give california more seats in congress and more vote in electoral college. what it your point but that situation? that will -- our state will lose representation with higher citizen population. >> that happens anyway. apportionment is based on total population. i want to remind everyone that it asks, are you a citizen? does not ask whether you're legal or illegal. because the sentence -- census opportunities total population, because apportionment is done on a total population, it means

states with large numbers of aliens who are here illegally actually get more congressional seats. a number of studies have been done. one of the last ones i saw had an estimate that california has between five and six extra congressional seats because of the large illegal population. and texas is estimated to have two some states, that if the apportionment was based only on citizenship population, they would get additional seats which they are not getting right now. that's not going change because you have citizenship question on here. that would only change if the law -- you might have to have a constitutional amendment governorring apportionment -- was changed. >> can i just -- one second. it's important to be clear but that last point. the constitution is clear that congressional -- the

apportionment of seats in the house to several states is not determined by citizenship. it's determine by the number of people living there. knowing with more presomethings the number of citizens in each state does not effect how many house seats each states get, which is another reason not to include it, in my opinion. >> right here in front. >> hi there i struggle with a little bit of a chicken and egg problem when it comes to the citizenship question and responses. of course there's a level of fear in the immigrant community right now just generally of the government, and we know from a while now that immigrants of one of the undercounted populations in every census, and that there's a -- census

automatically says, we have an undercount and figure out how much it is every year but seems to me the more we talk about the concern but this, the more people might get scared. so you have this chicken and egg where, as everybody talks but how scared people for respond, people would be more scared to respond. in past years there have been effort biz immigrant advocacy organizations to encourage responses so the census, recognizing the law says it cannot be used trying to advertise that. and so one question i have for mr. tom on and others is, how does the census work with other organizations to support response to the census, trying to alleviate fears, and how can we sort of baseball -- this is is going to happen, it's going to happen, there's still val lid reason to eave everybody counted for every reason you have said. how can we encourage more

responses in this age of fear? >> sure. so, since the 2000 census, the census bureau started a program of paid advertising combined with partnership and hire individuals to work in local communities and local governments and local places and local leadersed and get local voices to talk about the importance of the census and confidentiality of the census. i believe in the last census they had approximately 250,000 partners nationally to seek to help them get the word out about the importance of the census. so there's going to do -- they're going to do their the best 2020 to form as many partnerships as they can. the issue with the citizenship question is that it might make it harder for them to get the word out about the confidentiality of the census.

>> question in the back. you have thetime question -- the final question, sir. >> i'm todd. i wanted to ask if we could end with a happy note. i don't really believe that most of what is collected in the sun sunday is -- census is accurate because it's based on voluntary response. so it's like advertising. so, where is the census most accurately and ideally connected? what country in the planet does the best job of getting accurate information and has the best incentives for people to answer accurately, and how does that work and can we repeat that here? >> so, i don't even know -- i don't know if there is an

answer. may not be knowable. my first thought after hearing your question is to point our how simple and sparse the decennial census is. it's very basic questions. how many people live in the household, how old, what races, ethnicity. again, is i an argument against putting controversial questions on there. and that is likely collected quite accurately, but some of the hard to reach groups, who live in rural areas, members of immigrant and minority communities, the elderly, people who live in what census calls group quarters like college dorms and that extort -- that sort of stuff and that

highlights the need of the census bureau to be adequately funded in the runup to the census because the money needs to be spent today so when it comes time to send out the questionnaires and enumerators to knock on doors, that people know how to get to those hard to reach minutes and getting to people who are less likely to answer, and get an accurate response from them. >> we've covered an enormous amount of ground in a short period only of time. we want this project to be an enormous success and that's what our panelist commit told i'm reminded of the fact that both thomas jefferson and george washington throughout there was an undercount. so thank you to our panelists.

[applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible] questions [inaudible conversation]

>> on capitol hill today the senate will be gaveling in at 3:00 eastern time to debate the domination of kyle duncan on the court in texas, louisiana and mississippi am vote has been scheduled for 5:30. we'll have live coverage of the senate on c-span 2. on wednesday senators join members of the house for a joint meeting to hear from the french president, emanuel mac macron and on the nomination of mike

pompeo, joe manchin tweeted he is supporting mike pompeo's nomination. voting will be at 5:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> facebook isn't just a -- just ah handing over things you like when you click on like and also aggregating an enormous amount of information. if even if you start typing a status update and change your mind, facebook collects those and analyzes those. the deal we think we're making is a fairly limit amount ovation. the reality of is that the machine collects and tracks you across the web, across devices,

buys information about you from third parties, collectses and i then uses that to target you. >> watch "the communicators" tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span 2. >> tonight, on landmark cases, tinker very depoint -- des moines school district but free speech. students wore black arm bands to school to test the vietnam war. the students challenged the school board's free speech restrictions and the resulting supreme court decision established that the students keep their first amendment rights on school grounds. our guest to discuss this landmark cases are merry beth tinger, one of the five students who challenged the des moines school district. she was 13 and is a free speech

advocate for students, and eric jaffe, who works -- clerks for the supreme court clerks for clarence thomas. join the conversation-under, our #landmark cases and follow us at c-span. we referee source -- we have resources on our web page. >> tomorrow night tonight presiden