Curtailing the time for conducting the census in the middle of a pandemic will lead to 'fatal data quality flaws that are unacceptable,' Census Bureau career officials warned in an internal document.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau, waits for a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing to begin in Washington, D.C., in 2019. In July, Ross directed bureau officials to speed up the 2020 census to end counting a month early, on Sept. 30.Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau, waits for a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing to begin in Washington, D.C., in 2019. In July, Ross directed bureau officials to speed up the 2020 census to end counting a month early, on Sept. 30.
Internal emails and memos, which were released this weekend as part of a federal lawsuit in California, show career officials trying to hold the integrity of the once-a-decade count together in the last weeks of July amidShortening that schedule,,"will result in a census that has fatal data quality flaws that are unacceptable for a Constitutionally-mandated national activity."
With counting now set to end on Sept. 30, the revelations come shortly before federal courts are expected to decide whether to order the administration to keep tallying the country's residents through Oct. 31. The administration says it is under pressure to meet the current legal deadline of Dec. 31 for reporting to the president those state population totals that are used to reapportion congressional seats among the states. Justice Department attorneys say the scheduling problem is for Congress to fix, and so far, while some lawmakers have introduced bills, they have not yetA hearing before U.S.
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