Selling the Census

The U.S. Census Bureau today released the top-level results of the 2010 U.S. Census, including data on apportionment — which translates from bureaucratese as which-states-get-more-representatives-in-the-U.S.-House-and-which-states-lose-some.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

The data is unsurprising but portentious for national politics from 2013, when the first Congress under the newly redrawn districts is set to convene, onward: New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio will lose congressional representatives, among other northeastern and midwestern states, while states in the South and Southwest — including Florida, Arizona, and Utah — will gain. In other words, big Democratic population center New York is losing seats while Republican strongholds will get a louder voice in Congress.

Like a child who opens a Christmas present, only to become preoccupied with the wrapping paper, I'm more surprised by the the packaging and not the data itself. This Census Bureau, this year, has turned to new media again and again to deliver its message to Americans.

While the apportionment machine may or may not be a well-oiled and transparent democratic process, as the above video suggests, the following step in the process of redrawing the political map — redistricting — has long been a flawed and contentious ordeal in many states, fraught with accusations of discrimination, political skulduggery, and blatant horse-trading.

But back to the Census' new-media pacakaging. Shiny!

Most recently, there's this video, in the tradition of the White House's "White Board" series, that explains a complex bureaucratic process for a general audience. The visual style here — simple animation, visualizations, bold-face type — is the video equivalent of large, friendly letters. And there's also an interactive map that breaks down population changes and number of House seats by state. Or probably will, anyway. As of this writing, the 2010 data, just released today, did not appear on the map. Still, though: Interactivity! And, with links to download the data in CSV format on the page, open data!

This package is not the Census Bureau's first foray into new media. Census officials called in big-name politicians to record web videos encouraging Americans to participate in the census and partnered with Google to create a map that provided a real-time look at census participation rates across the country while surveys were sent in and census workers were knocking on doors. Behind the scenes, too, the bureau sent representatives to journalism conferences and events — I noticed them at more than one — hoping to educate reporters on census information, presumably to increase the number of stories based on census data.

This is the first in a series of datasets to be released over time. According to Census Bureau announcements, the more detailed datasets will begin to come out in February.

This data, and the American public's ability to understand it for themselves, is important because it determines who in this country votes for whom.

As the bureau explains on its 2010 webpage, it's up to the states to redraw their political districts based in part on the data the U.S. Census Bureau is giving them — meaning, in the simplest and most cynical terms, that whichever party happens to be in power for the 2011 legislative session in a given state has a chance to entrench.

It's not hard to imagine that easier access to demographic data, and the unprecedented access everyday people now have to the tools and expertise necessary to make maps based on that data, might lead to greater transparency, and greater transparency might make gerrymandering harder to pull off.

Of course, it's also easy to imagine that, as is sometimes the case, an issue of phenomenal importance is too complicated or seemingly esoteric to properly explain, and not enough people will know or care. And — cynical, again — where gerrymandering is de rigeur, there's always the supposition that no amount of public outcry can shake entrenched politicians from reaching across party lines to act in their own mutual self-interest.

We're already on the lookout for new tools to understand this old problem, and seeking more information about how they might fix (or not fix, or break anew) this process. If you know of some, email us.