Sean Patrick Maloney: “the folks at the Census Bureau must be getting a pretty thick skin. This is certainly not the first time they have been…”

“the folks at the Census Bureau must be getting a pretty thick skin. This is certainly not the first time they have been criticized. Guess who lodged the first complaint about an undercount? George Washington. He complained to Thomas Jefferson, who was the Marti Ritchie of the 1790s, that the numbers were too low. Washington knew that even back in 1790 when there were only about 3.9 million people living in the colonies, that there was no way to accurately count each American by simply going door to door. The Census has been surrounded by controversy ever since. In 1920, the party in power was so dismayed by the Census numbers, they simply dismissed them. For the first time, the Census showed that urban areas held a greater proportion of the population than did rural areas. The shift was so devastating to the majority, that Congress just failed to act, claiming that these numbers could not possibly be right. The 1930 Census affirmed the shift and Congress was forced to act. In 1940, the impact of the undercount simply could not be denied. The War Department was depending on the Census to determine the number of young men eligible to serve. Turns out there were many more men ready to defend their country than the count had indicated. Specifically, young black men were greatly underestimated. Over 5 percent of the population was left out of the 1940 Census. As a result, the Census Bureau began a program to measure and understand the undercount.”