Census

• Author: Samuel Issacharoff
• Pages: 326-327

Page 326

Article I of the Constitution requires a decennial census of the population in order to apportion congressional REPRESENTATION among the states. In the landmark REAPPORTIONMENT cases of the 1960s, the census assumed a central role not only in apportionment but in the process of ELECTORAL DISTRICTING as well. Following the command of JAMES MADISON in FEDERALIST No. 54 that "numbers are the only proper scale of representation," the Supreme Court in REYNOLDS V. SIMS (1964) decreed that "[p]opulation is, of necessity, the starting point for consideration and the controlling criterion for judgment in legislative apportionment controversies." Reliance on the census was indispensable for the Court's willingness to confront the "political thicket" of redistricting and representation.

First, numerical standards from the census provided unassailable empirical data and thereby stemmed charges of the judiciary's making impermissible political decisions. Second, the census provided the denominator for the ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE rule, which emerged as the most successful JUSTICIABLE standard for overseeing politics. Third, the imposition of objective apportionment constraints furthered the efforts to control GERRYMANDERING and helped realize the Court's 1969 command that "each resident citizen has, as far as is possible, an equal voice in the selections [of public officials]."

Since the 1960s, the hope that the census could bring constitutional order to the reapportionment process has faded. Despite its apparent simplicity, the one person, one vote rule engendered considerable litigation and conflicting rules of tolerable deviations for federal and state redistricting. Rather than defeat gerrymanders, the one person, one vote standard spawned a burgeoning industry of computer-aided redistricting that in turn allowed clever partisan manipulations. Even the Court admitted in 1983 that "the rapid advances in computer technology and education during the last two decades make it relatively simple to draw contiguous districts of equal population and at the same time to further whatever secondary goals the State has."

The increased constitutional role occupied by the census also raised the pressure on the decennial enumeration. For all its appearance of objective neutrality, the census involves difficult demographic decisions resulting from a large and mobile population. The census requires "attribution" and "correction" of residence...