Anti-census zealots are scaring Karl Rove

Lewiston Morning Tribune
Saturday, April 17, 2010

When the anti-government crowd generates a cautionary note from former George W. Bush White House adviser Karl Rove, it's time to remix the Kool-Aid.

Here's what alarms Rove:

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachman, R-Minn., said she will pick and choose what parts of the 2010 census form she'll fill out.

Rush Limbaugh advises people not to answer the census questions concerning race.

Sean Hannity is complaining about the census counting undocumented immigrants.

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, says any question beyond how many people live in a household is none of the government's business. "It is not hard to imagine that information compiled by the census could be used against people in the future, despite claims to the contrary and the best intentions of those currently in charge of the Census Bureau," he says.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., questions the Census Bureau's authority to collect even the limited information it wants this year. Gone is the long form and more detailed questions will be handled through the bureau's ongoing American Community Survey.

And the Libertarian Party has declared the census procedures "unconstitutional, unnecessary and too expensive."

It's having some effect. For instance, 54-year-old Richard L. Powell of St. Maries is accused of firing his shotgun as a census worker tried to deliver his questionnaire last month.

Census Bureau spokesmen say voluntary compliance is on par with the last census.

In Asotin County, 71 percent filled out the questionnaire. There's still about a month to go, so Asotin County is on track to match its 2000 performance, which was 77 percent. Same goes for Whitman County, now at 66 percent, and Garfield County, now at 61 percent.

Nez Perce County reached 81 percent compliance in 2000. It's now pushing past 72 percent this year. Latah County is at 70 percent, closing in on the 76 percent rate it had 10 years ago.

As a whole, 67 percent of Washington's residents so far have filled out the form, so the state will easily match its 2000 level of 72 percent. The same goes for Idaho, where 70 percent have complied so far vs. 75 percent in 2000.

But that still leaves more than a quarter of the country to round up. People who don't comply tend to be younger, non-English speakers and folks with a distrust of government. What Bachman, Coburn and Paul are doing at minimum will cost you money. If the forms come back incomplete or not at all, census field workers - at a cost of $57 per household - will collect the information. For every 1 percent of households that don't fill out the form, the government will spend $85 million digging up answers.

But here's what has Rove concerned. He's a pragmatist. He knows that since 1790, the United States has been a representative democracy. To represent people, you have to locate and count them. (And in a nation that started out representing black slaves as three-fifths of a person, the question of race always was part of the census.)

The folks who challenge government authority by snubbing or evading the census guarantee one result: Fewer of them will be represented in Congress. The folks who support government programs will have more congressional districts and more of their electoral votes will go toward electing a president of their choice.

Having engineered two close Electoral College elections on behalf of Bush, Rove knows exactly what that could mean to the conservative cause. It's unilateral disarmament.

So he's cut a public service announcement urging people to fill out the forms. The question now is whether right-wingers who have become so consumed with anti-government zealotry still respond to reality when the message is coming from one of their own. - M.T.