S8 E3: Counting Chaos: The Fight for a Complete Census and Dependable Data

Episode Transcript

Kanya Bennett
Welcome to Pod For The Cause, the official podcast of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Leadership Conference Education Fund, where we take on the critical civil and human rights issues of our day. I’m your host, Kanya Bennett, coming to you from our nation’s capital, Washington, D. C. Today, we are diving into how our country’s data, especially the census, is being challenged, politicized, and protected. April 1 was the commemoration of Census Day, but behind that milestone lies a critical and ongoing battle. Who gets counted, how we’re counted, and what’s at stake when people are erased from the numbers that shape everything from political power to public resources. And for those of you who are not sure what this means exactly and how it affects you, listen up. Actions by the Trump administration, from erasing critical data sets on government websites, to adding a citizenship question to the census, threaten democracy. These changes to how we count people will impact everyday lives. Under- counts can meet federal funding losses for schools, hospitals, and other community resources, an inaccurate count can result in the creation of congressional districts that deny voters political power. And understand with the elimination of accurate or whole data, we erase people and communities from our society. But while some of the census and data harms from the Trump administration are unprecedented, these fights for fair and equitable counts are not new and have been challenged and won by the civil rights community. Today, my guests will discuss how we continue to protect and preserve the hard- fought gains for our census and data that reflect everyone, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or citizenship status. So let me introduce our three incredible guests who’ve been on the front lines of this fight. First, let me welcome my colleague, Meeta Anand, senior director of Census & Data Equity at the Leadership Conference. Welcome, Meeta.

Meeta Anand
Kanya, could not be more excited to be here.

Kanya Bennett
Thank you, Meeta. And folks should know Meeta is one of our loyal listeners here on Pod For The Cause. So Meeta, it is an honor to have you, truly.

Meeta Anand
I should have said long time, first time.

Kanya Bennett
Absolutely. Next, let me welcome Terry Ao Minnis, vice- president of Census and Voting Programs at Asian Americans Advancing Justice, AAJC, and co- chair of the Census Task Force at the Leadership Conference. Hello, Terry.

Terry Ao Minnis
Thank you for having me here today, Kanya. Super excited.

Kanya Bennett
And let me introduce Brendan Shanahan, lecturer in the Department of History and an associate research scholar at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. Hi, Brendan.

Brendan Shanahan
It’s a real pleasure. Thanks for the invitation, Kanya.

Kanya Bennett
Brendan, you have a new book out, plug the book. You’re an author, what’s the title?

Brendan Shanahan
The title is Disparate Regimes: Nativist Politics, Alienage Law, and Citizenship Rights in the United States, 1865-1965.

Kanya Bennett
Thank you, Brendan.

Brendan Shanahan
Thank you.

Kanya Bennett
I’ll, I’ll pick up the book and get to read it, and I’m sure you all will want to after today’s conversation. Let’s start by zooming out a bit, and Meeta, let me begin with you. The census is a massive operation, but one that seems almost neutral on its face. We’re just counting people, right? But as we discuss in this episode, the stakes around the census and data are significant. Why is a full and fair census foundational to both democracy and equity? Why is data such a big deal?

Meeta Anand
So before I joined the leadership conference, I was working on Get Out The Count efforts in the 2020 census in New York. And in New York, we had this phrase, money, power, and respect. That’s what the census was important for. So money, we understand, the census data that are collected help to direct where federal funds blow. And in 2021, the numbers were staggering. It’s$ 2. 8 trillion that were directed by census data. And I want to be clear, the census does not distribute money. It’s the data that policymakers use and formulas are used to determine where the money then flows to. Secondly, we have the power component, and you’ve referenced most of these things already, Kanya, the power component is these are the numbers of people in states, in districts, and these numbers are used to draw the lines, to determine what your district is, where you vote, and that can help determine things like who represents you, who else is considered part of your community. It literally determines where you go to vote. I remember standing at my voting place this year and someone saying, ” I don’t remember voting at this table before.” And someone said, ” Well, that’s because there’s been a census since you last voted, and the districts were redrawn, and you’re now in a new district.” And they were shocked to hear that, but it’s the census that determines that. That’s the power component, it determines who you are voting for and where you are voting. And the respect component is one that is often overlooked but I think really key. The census helps tell the story of who we are as a nation. It tells us who is in the nation, what is their background, what is their race, what is their ethnicity, how many of us are there? It gives that complete demographic picture of what it means to be an American, and allows us to have a conception of who we are. That’s sort of the super big picture. But when you have these data, it also allows you to unmask inequities. Once you have that foundational understanding of who is here and where they live, you can then start looking at what are the differing conditions that people are having in their lived experience? And so that’s why it’s so foundational to equity. I think we can also get into concepts of under- count, and I’m sure we’ll get there, how different groups are not counted at the same rate, which has its own civil rights implications. But what I’m talking about here is we can’t even figure out what inequities are unless we have the data to allow us to do that analysis. So data is a big deal, because it’s about representation, and I’m using the word representation in a very broad way. Not only it determines political representation, we are being represented in the data. And in today’s society, if you’re not showing up in a data set, it’s like you’re not existing for all these decisions, these decisions regarding funding, these decisions regarding tailoring policies, decisions about do we understand who lives where and who would need to be saved in a natural disaster? If you’re not in that data, then you are not being able to be considered as we think about the future and where we want things to go. We have civil rights enforcement, which we’ll also get into, but I’m just saying just very, very baseline, we need to know these things to know who we are, in order to then make all the decisions we need to make, to create better lives for everyone.

Kanya Bennett
Thank you so much, Meeta, for making that very compelling case in terms of why we need a fair and accurate census, why we need whole data. So Terry, let me turn to you. We just heard Meeta talk about money, power, and respect, I like that, when it comes to the census and data, so we have a better understanding of why complete and accurate data is at the very foundation of democracy. Meeta alluded to this, what happens when we do not get it right? What patterns of exclusion or under- representation have you seen in past census efforts and how do those patterns affect political and economic power?

Terry Ao Minnis
So I think Meeta sets us up very well with her response, and I’m also going to take a step back and sort of look at the big picture. If you think about a census count, our ideal is that it is a 100% accurate count of every person in the country. At the same time, we recognize perfection is not something that we are going to achieve, so we recognize that we are not actually going to count every single person in the country. To be clear, this would not be a problem if everybody from different groups were missed at the same rate, and this is because, proportionally, everybody would still get their fair share of money, power, and respect. Unfortunately, what we have seen, decade after decade, is that particular groups tend to be missed more often than others, and that can go down based off of different communities of color. For example, the last census, we definitely saw a high under- count rates in the Latino community, the African- American community and the Native American community, particularly on reservations, and it can also break down across economic configurations and other characteristics. I think also important to remember is that even if you have a community such as Asian Americans, where the Census Bureau will tell you that it was an accurate count because there was no national net under- count, that doesn’t actually tell the entire story. As a community, Asian Americans have historically been under- counted, and even when the net under- count shows a zero, if you will, what that really means is that people in the community are being missed at equal rates to those being double counted or over counted. The problem with that is that people who are missed are not coming from the same communities where people are being double counted. So you have an effect where not only is it not an accurate count, you’re actually having an effect where two communities or two parts of the communities are actually sort of being driven further and further apart. And this is all important, because when it comes to democracy, to political power, and to money, and to respect, these differences mean that certain communities continue to be left behind, that certain communities continue to benefit at an outsize rate, compared to other communities. And these different communities likely often do not have the same concerns, have the same necessarily needs or agendas. And so it is important that we have a fair and accurate count, so that everybody can be accounted for, and different communities’ needs, and perspectives, and priorities are also taken into consideration when developing, say, a social policy for the entire country.

Kanya Bennett
Let me turn to you, Brendan, and pick up on these points that Terry is making around what happens when we don’t have an inclusive census, what happens when we don’t get the data right? And as you suggested when you gave the title of your new book, you are thinking about this too, studying the intersection of data, democracy, and the law, and again, what happens when we don’t have everyone reflected there. So from a historical perspective, how has the manipulation or control of data shaped systems of power in the United States, and today, how do you see these actions fitting within the broader concerns many of us have around a lack of government transparency and authoritarianism that many have sort of described this administration using as its guide of governance?

Brendan Shanahan
Going back to the initial question you posed to Meeta, I think it’s important to begin by recognizing that census questions, things we often take for granted, are not neutral. They’re fundamentally questions of political power and, ideally, fairness. Infamous moments in American political history, the Constitution, the Three- Fifths Clause, the Indians not taxed provision of apportionment were embedded into the very debates over what would become the American system of representative governance, what is the polity, and who counts at the Constitutional Convention? These of course are monumental episodes in the history of racism and discrimination in American history, but as they played out in practice in real time, they were designed to effectuate regional, sectional, factional, and eventually partisan power. In the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, this played out again in the revision of the nation’s Constitution. Questions over who should and who will count became paramount in the drafting of especially the 14th Amendment, but becomes embedded as well into questions of suffrage rights in the 15th Amendment. And after a lot of debate over whether immigrants who aren’t citizens should count, whether all former members of the Confederacy should count, et cetera, more or less, the 14th Amendment decided everybody counts moving forward. It is based on whether you are a resident of the United States, and eventually this Indians not taxed provision goes away in practice, and that remains Constitutional law to this day. History, particularly an infamous episode of the 1920s, points out what can happen when there’s an attempt to pretend that that Constitutional law doesn’t exist and more or less to subvert it. Every 10 years, after the census, the House of Representatives and thereby the Electoral College, is supposed to be reapportioned. Every 10 years, in American history, that’s happened, except one time, and that was after the 1920 census, when a group of congressmen, senators, often Southern Democrats and more rural Republicans were afraid and concerned that the next round of reapportionment would harm them and their factional and partisan allies. And so searching around for pretext to delay or outright stymie the reapportionment, they latched on to this idea, ” Well, let’s just not count non- citizens,” in large part because they would hope, if actually enacted, circumscribe the power of growing industrial centers, which had a large percentage of immigrants. Again, the 14th Amendment was very clear on the matter. This was foremost a pretext to delay, but it became the grounding of much of the political context. And while eventually, after the 1930 census, they got it right by 1929 and then in 1930, in the aftermath of that census, the Congress was reapportioned, but it serves as an episode of what can happen, delay, questions of really subverting the constitution and provoking a slow but grinding constitutional crisis can play out when there’s an attempt to manipulate data or deliberately misread the basic grounding of the Constitution’s reapportionment provisions.

Kanya Bennett
Thank you, Brendan. You know, Meeta got very excited when you mentioned the 14th Amendment, got very excited about the Constitution itself. Well, what is the Constitution these days? Does anyone care about it in terms of the powers that be, the powers who are in charge of our federal government? Meeta, let’s build upon sort of what Brendan just shared, and we know that this approach the administration was going to take to census and data was previewed in Project 2025, and we know that there really wasn’t much concern as to whether or not that agenda aligned with the Constitution and our principles there. So with Project 2025 underway, big picture, what impact are you seeing or anticipating the Census Bureau’s ability to collect accurate data, and with the trust of communities that have been historically under- counted, as both Brendan and Terry have mentioned in this conversation so far?

Meeta Anand
I did get excited, because to me, it’s exciting that we’re having this conversation because this is so important. I wonder if some people are like, ” Why is the Leadership Conference talking about the census in 2025?” But that means it’s only five years away, and there are a lot of things that can happen now that’ll make it go less well, and that’s what we’re keeping our eye out for. So I’m going to start actually picking up where Brendan left us, which was these notions that we should be excluding non- citizens from apportionment, apportionment being the means by which we determine how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives. So when we say excluding non- citizens from apportionment, what we’re saying is we will only determine the number of seats a state gets in the House of Representatives based on the number of citizens that are living there. One thing that is afoot right now, once again, because everything old is new again, one thing that is afoot are attempts that we have seen in Congress, and this happened even in 2024, is to exclude non- citizens from apportionment counts. What this means to me is it’s a fight for the soul of who counts as American, but it’s also, as you pointed out, Kanya, it flies in the face of the Constitution. It is an attempt to consolidate power only within certain groups, and what Terry described before is a vicious cycle. When you’re not having access to power, you’re then not having access to resources, and then you’re not having access to the power that would help you get the resources you need. So it’s an entrenchment of power and privilege when you start excluding groups that constitutionally should be counted. So we have that. Then we have, I’m sorry for saying this word, so trigger warning, DOGE, which is running around in the federal government, accessing public data. You might be wondering why I’m talking about that here. Well, we’re talking about public data, so if you are a person that sees stories that DOGE has gone in and taken data, that the IRS has decided to share data with ICE, so that they can locate undocumented immigrants in our country, presumably for the purposes of extraordinary renditions, if you see this, then what incentive do you have to share any of your data with the federal government? No matter how much we all stand up and say, ” No, this helps you,” people are going to put their own personal safety first. They’re going to put their fears first, and this is not just about undocumented immigrants, it’s about mixed status families, it’s about children and it’s about literally anyone who might historically think, ” I don’t trust the federal government,” which represents many of our communities of color for very well- founded reasons, and suddenly they’re seeing this behavior. So we’re seeing an undermining of the trust in public data. Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t say the Census Bureau has incredibly strong provisions, confidentiality provisions governed by Title XIII. I have to say the words Title XIII, because otherwise any census advocate listening to this will be like, ” Meeta didn’t say Title XIII.” But Title XIII protects census data. It is a very, very strict provision, with strict penalties and with only limited exceptions, but we don’t know yet if it’s going to stand up, and we need to see that. So that undermining of trust is going to lead to a declining in response rates, which is something that we are going to have to grapple with. Next up, I would point out that we have seen something which was straight up previewed in Project 2025, which is the elimination of advisory committees to the Census Bureau, including the 2030 Advisory Committee, because Secretary Lutnick determined it had fulfilled its purpose. By 2025, it had fulfilled its purpose. Clearly, that’s laughable and not believable. These committees help determine new methods of counting people, new outreach methods, understanding community needs and perspectives. So if we want to eliminate historic and persistent under- counts, these committees are part of the way to that. It also allows for public interface with the Bureau and the channeling of information, so it helps build trust, so getting rid of those committees does the opposite. So we look to those committees to help bring the community perspective in, but instead they’ve been eliminated, under the guise that these are communities we shouldn’t really be worrying about, and we’ve figured it all out already. I could go on, so I’m only going to do three more, but I’ll do them quickly. One is we have, coming up next year, the 2026 census test. It’s like little mini tests throughout the country that helped determine outreach methods and new technologies, and they’re done throughout the country so that they can be tested in different geographic areas and with different demographic groups. Well, the Census Bureau is under a hiring freeze, just like the rest of the federal government. You can’t conduct those tests without hiring the workforce to conduct those tests. So we’re worried about those tests, and if you don’t do those tests, then you don’t have as good a result. We saw something like this in 2020, where the pretest was only conducted in Providence, Rhode Island. They canceled the tests on American Indian reservations and in rural areas. And guess what? We saw huge declines in the response rates in those areas, and we’re not surprised by that. I would also say that, right now, we don’t have a Census Bureau director, and we haven’t seen one nominated. It is important in these times to have a leader that is pushing forward the agenda and the mission of the agency. And finally, I saved it for last, we fully expect to see a citizenship question find its way onto the 2030 census. Now, I’m going to say something marginally controversial. I am less worried about that now than I was before, because the reason I was worried about a citizenship question was because it would have a chilling effect on response rates and would undermine trust in public data. So I feel like the harm the citizenship question could do has already started being played out. We need to still fight in every single way that we can to ensure that we do not have a federal government that is abusing public data in the way that it has been so far and actively seeking to undermine the ability to count everyone. As Brendan said, we are supposed to count everyone. That is what was determined, and we need the bureau to do those things, instead of taking all of these actions that leads basically to a result of an entrenchment of those already in power.

Kanya Bennett
Thank you, Meeta, for breaking all of that down. And Terry, let’s get you into some of this controversy around the addition of a citizenship question to the census, which, as Meeta just articulated, is anticipated for 2030. So for some people, this may seem like a reasonable question to add. I mean, we’re asking about everything else, this is just another piece of data to collect, but as Meeta acknowledged, this addition of a citizenship question has sparked intense legal and advocacy battles. So help our listeners understand how a citizenship question negatively impacts the Asian American community and other communities of color.

Terry Ao Minnis
So I think Meeta again set up the question very well with her response. So I think one thing that is important to note about a citizenship question, and one of the reasons why it is not necessary and should not be added to the Decennial Census, is the fact that there is a citizenship question already asked on the American Community Survey. Now, that is the sister survey, I call it, I don’t know if anyone else calls it that, but I call it that, to the Decennial Census. It is what replaced the long- form census back in the day, for those who remember, and it’s the survey that asks the questions around social and economic characteristics that are very important for us to be able to do the work that we do, for people to be able to identify problems, secure solutions, and the like. And in the voting context, for example, Section 2 or 3 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires certain jurisdictions to provide language assistance to limited English proficient voters of particular language, that is all determined by the American Community Survey. So it is an important question, but as many other things, right time, right place, the Decennial Census form is not the right time or the right place to ask that question. It is not necessary, for all the reasons that Meeta had said. So for the Asian American community, it is particularly problematic, and for other communities of color, because we have high rates of immigration patterns, right? For Asian American community in particular, there is a long history of racist immigration policies against our community, so we have a out- sized portion of our community who are actually born in a country other than the United States, because we were barred from coming into the country for many decades. That’s one, of course, in the Latino population, you also have a large portion of the community that are either naturalized or still not a US citizen. And even in the Black community, we are seeing increases in immigrant communities for all of these folks. To Meeta’s point, there is going to be some concern about, ” Hey, why are you asking this all of a sudden? It’s asked somewhere else, why do you need this information now?” When you couple that with everything else that is happening, of course, there’s going to be grave concerns coming from these communities, and we have to put this context of the fact that, before the current administration was in place, we had already been seeing an overall decline in response rates for surveys across the board. Now, the Census Bureau, the Census and the ACS have long held high rates of responses compared to other surveys, because it is mandatory under law. But even with that, we had started to see a decline. I remember in one of the National Advisory Committee meetings last decade, when Advancing Justice- AAJC was a member, hearing a story about how an interviewer from the Census Bureau who was working on a survey, not the Census and not the American Community Survey, but one of the surveys that the Census Bureau takes, the respondent that they were talking to, the interview was going fine, when the questions turned to citizenship, the respondent got so upset that they got up and left their own house, leaving the interviewer there, because they were so concerned about this coming up. So we know that there will absolutely be a decline in response rates. And going back to the idea of the differential effects that we talked about earlier, this certainly will have an out- sized effect on our communities, as communities that have larger immigrant populations. We also know that our communities tend to be the ones that are more or most distrustful of the government. This comes from testing that the Census Bureau has done decade after decade around Census Barriers, Attitudes and Motivators Study that they do, which is really just sort of message testing and how they determine how they’re going to develop their communications plan every decade. And so we have seen from that that our communities are the ones that have the highest levels of distrust and the ones who are going to need the most kind of coaxing and massaging around messaging. So the citizenship question will completely blow that out of the water, although acknowledging Meeta’s point that a lot of that has already been blown out the water. But I think one thing that we sometimes forget to consider about the fact that if a citizenship question were to be added, not only are you increasing the distrust of the actual people who would be responding, we are going to be losing the trust of trusted messengers, the people that the Census Bureau has been relying on decade after decade to help get the message out that this is important, that your responses are confidential, that it is safe. The groups, our groups, groups on the ground, organizers, faith- based organizations, last decade, when the citizenship question was coming up, there was a lot of chatter about whether people felt like, ” Hey, can we still say this? Can I, in good conscience, go out and say it is safe for you to participate in the census?” and if you lose those trusted messengers, it is a wash. There is no way that there will be a fair and accurate census count in 2030.

Kanya Bennett
Brendan, a lot to unpack there, and want to ask you about some of the points raised by Terry, some of the points raised by Meeta. You know, Terry just said our communities of color have been most distrustful of the federal government, and Terry also said, I think Meeta started this, right, maybe that opportunity to have trust in the present day has already been blown out of the water. Meeta talked about no advisory committees, no mini tests, no Census Bureau director, but yes to a citizenship question. That is where we are right now. Brendan, as sort of our historian and scholar here, I mean, have you seen anything like this before? Are you aware of anything like this previously, and what does it mean for what we can anticipate in the road to 2030?

Brendan Shanahan
There were indeed citizenship questions on the main census form a long time ago, indeed pre- Civil Rights reforms at this point, but I think the historical episode that I find most illustrative of these fears were a citizenship question to be added today, and concerns about breakdowns in trust, and what might happen with data goes back to one of the most infamous episodes in American Civil Rights and Civil Liberties histories in modern American history, Japanese American incarceration. This is subject of recent scholarship by Margo Anderson and Bill Seltzer, among others, who point out that in the context of a declared national emergency, in this case World War II, the protections for census data that, Meeta, you were describing embedded into federal law, saying, ” Okay, this individualized data is only for Census Bureau officials, and only for particular purposes, and not to be shared with other departments of the US government or to third parties,” was overridden in the context of a declared national emergency. And that individualized data was used to first identify and then facilitate the incarceration of Japanese American citizens and Japanese nationals. And so when we think about how episodes in American political history, episodes in civil liberties, civil rights history like that played out in a different time, a time of a declared national emergency, that should inform how we approach subsequent debates over what data’s collected and what might happen to it, even if there are policies in place that say, ” Nope, this is not going to be shared.” Well, similar protections were embedded into law in the past. Then, when quote, unquote” times changed”, those laws and protections were overridden. That is the episode and the lesson that I just want listeners to sit with and inform their own thinking about this topic.

Terry Ao Minnis
If I could interject really quickly, because clearly, this is a incident that is particularly pertinent and of interest to the Asian American community, do want to be clear that the protections that were in place at the time were not Title XIII specifically, that Title XIII in fact was developed, to a certain extent, in response to the incident Brendan is discussing, to help ensure that something like that does not happen again. The national emergency that was declared was actually a piece of legislation, the Wars Powers Act that overrode that. So it was not just the whim of, say, the executive branch to make that decision to be able to override that. Finally, I think also important to note that over the last two censuses, the Department of Justice and other entities had done an analysis of the Patriot Act, and had found that that Patriot Act did not in fact override Title XIII protection. So I do want to put it in context, I agree with Brendan that it’s something we should be mindful of, we should be aware of. We see that the current administration is certainly creative in how they are approaching their policy, so it is certainly something we should be mindful of, but we should also be mindful that the Title XIII protections are the strongest confidentiality protections in place in law today. And of course, we will continue to monitor. There are plenty of lawyers chomping at the bit to protect that, should an attempt be made to violate that. But again, just want to make sure that we have the context of how that occurred, that terrible breach of confidence and confidentiality during World War II that had clearly a devastating effect on the Japanese American community, with the Japanese incarceration that occurred, and we are already and standing ready to make sure nothing like that happens again.

Brendan Shanahan
Terry, thanks for the clarification. I think that’s really important information to share. I was trying to take a 30, 000- foot view over century plus of history, but I should have known better with this team of census experts to try to do so in a 45- second clip.

Kanya Bennett
You mentioned, Terry, the advocacy community, litigators, advocates being at the ready to protect some of the hard- fought gains with respect to protecting the census, protecting data. So I want to move us to some of these solutions. Meeta, let me go to you and ask you about the concrete steps that can be taken, whether policy reforms, agency- level actions, community partnerships, of course, coalition work, right? We are the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. What of those pieces are essential to ensuring a fair and accurate census for 2030?

Meeta Anand
I do want to first say what a great conversation that was, especially since both Brendan and Terry were right, like Brendan told us what we should be worried about and Terry told us how we already are here, thanks to some changes, which I just thought to me shows us we can take concrete steps as we move forward. And I think the conversation actually takes us back to Title XIII. We need to show, we need Congress and we need the Census Bureau, we need to have a recommitment to Title XIII and its strict protection of individual data, and we need to have an overall commitment as a society on the sanctity of public data being used for public good and not being weaponized. And that needs to happen now, before we start eroding trust in these systems even further. If we start losing our public data, and I’m not just talking census, but it applies to Census Bureau products too, we start losing our ability to tell the truth. We’re going to just sit around and argue about facts, instead of actually diagnosing problems, and determining inequities, and devising policy solutions. We need to figure it out ASAP, and we need to do it by having people commit to that privacy and confidentiality of data, and what the purpose of such data is, so that’s one. Number two, this one is not going to be surprising, we need the Census Bureau to be properly and robustly funded, so that it can do what it needs to do to take the steps towards 2030. We’re halfway through the cycle, this is where funding ramps up. That is not what we’re seeing. That’s not what we anticipate to see, but it is what needs to happen. We need to conduct that 2026 test. We need to conduct that Barriers, Attitude and Motivators test that Terry was talking about. All of these things need to happen. We need the Census Bureau to be able to do its outreach to communities. So what does that mean? We need those advisory committees to come back online, to do their work, and have that public accountable interchange of information between the Bureau and the public. And what we really need, we need everyone to be involved, starting now. Luckily, at the Leadership Conference, we have a census task force. It meets, it’s engaged. That community of organizations is engaged, the broader coalition is engaged, but what we need is for state CBOs, community- based organizations, to come online now. And I know it feels like everything is on fire, maybe because everything is on fire, but data are foundational. So we need everyone to start looking at it and insisting on the importance of data. So I said community- based organizations, we need state and local governments to insist upon this. We need faith- based leaders, like Terry said, to insist upon this. But what we really need is for chambers of commerce and business interests to also say, ” We are allies in this fight,” and not be scared off by the word equity. Equity just means that we want a fair chance for all. It does not mean anything beyond that. So when we’re saying equity, we’re saying fair chance for all, and all means all, and all means businesses and chambers of commerce, you name it, are also using these, finance professionals, they are also using these data. They need these data, too. This is the grease by which our current society functions. So we need to create that, God forgive me for this next one, that big tent. We need to create that big tent that brings everyone underneath, to say, ” We need fair and accurate data about our communities, so that we are able to move forward as a society where everyone survives and thrives.”

Kanya Bennett
All right, Meeta, thank you for those calls to action. Terry, let me ask you about some of the next steps you would like our listeners to pursue. You work at the intersection of census and voting. Obviously, a lot of what we discussed today as a result of voting, sort of who we’ve installed at the federal level and elsewhere, it comes down to sort of the political power that communities, districts have. How can we better connect the dots for the public between fair census data and fair voting maps? What do you need our folks to do to understand the connection between the two?

Terry Ao Minnis
I think in my mind, as I heard Meeta speak, what it encapsulated for me was the need for the census to once again become a nonpartisan or bipartisan issue. For decades and decades, it has been exactly that, because everybody recognized having accurate information about their communities was very important for their ability to do their jobs. Unfortunately, the census has become also a polarizing issue, as many other issues have become, and I think that that is certainly something that is very unfortunate, and that is one thing that I would like to see change, and I think Meeta’s big tent is exactly that idea. If it’s a bipartisan, nonpartisan issue, we should have a big tent, because everybody should care about these issues. I think one thing that I think would also be really important to see, also going to something that Meeta said, was to make sure that there’s transparency about what the Census Bureau is doing and that there is engagement with interested stakeholders about these issues, whether it’s advisory committees and other mechanisms. One thing that I think a lot of people are not aware of is that it actually takes an entire decade to put on a census. A lot of people may not think about it till the eight year, or the nine year, or even when it’s actually happening, in the zero year. Meetings about the 2030 census were happening as the 2020 census were being taken in all of its craziness, due to the pandemic, but that is how it happens, right? And so it is important that the Bureau is transparent about things that it’s doing, research that it’s conducted, research that it wants to conduct, what decisions they’re making, for example, on what administrative records are they planning to use, how do they plan to use them, what are their residence rules going to be this decade? What disclosure avoidance system are they going to use? And these are some of the more mundane, apparently, not everybody thinks census is a super sexy topic, but the nitty- gritty nuts and bolts of how to take a census. The decisions are made in these upcoming years that are going to be very difficult to undo down the line, and therefore they will really help not just the confidence and response rates issues, which are very critical, but even the actual logistical aspect of taking a census. Decisions that can be made affect the ability to accurately count our communities. For example, if you rely on administrative records for which communities of color are not well- represented, then you could have a detrimental effect that way. Or, if the data are available but don’t denote racial and ethnic identifications, that’s another lost opportunity. And certainly, for Asian Americans for example, not having disaggregated data, which most data sets and administrative records will not have, disaggregated data, meaning noting somebody’s Chinese, or Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese and so forth, that will also be lost. And when you lose that, then you lose the ability to understand your community, as Meeta had mentioned. All of that then goes to voting, to the second part of your question. The reason why the vice- president of census and voting programs is because we see how they are interconnected, right? The Census is taken because the US constitution requires it for the purposes of apportionment, as Brendan had explained to us. And that naturally leads to redistricting, because once you’ve reapportioned the seats, you then have to ensure that the districts are equal populous. Then, you have redistricting at the federal, state, and local levels. And you need to have accurate data to make sure that you are actually drawing districts that are going to be representative of their communities, right? Before we even get to who is counted, which of course it should be, the total population, just the baseline, you have to have the accurate count to be able to actually divide things up equally. If your count is missing 10 people, I’m going to try to do this on the fly, if you’re missing 10 people and it’s not noted, then you think you’re 2 districts could be equal at 20 each. But in actuality, one district may be representing 30 people instead of 20. And then again, you have out- sized representation and the like. That is something that is really critical to understanding why census is so important for voting rights. In addition to Section 2 or 3, as I mentioned earlier, around language assistance, even just voting rights litigation, being able to show the harmful effects of particular voting policies, requires having data to be able to make the case. What I don’t have necessarily the best answer for is how do we connect the dots? How do we make that clear for the public? Because let’s be honest, a lot of us worked around not only Get Off The Count efforts around census outreach and education, but also trying to engage communities to participate in the redistricting process. And it’s hard, redistricting can often seem esoteric. You run into similar problems like with some of the apathy you see from voters, ” Why should I bother? It doesn’t matter.” And sometimes, unfortunately, because of the way redistricting can occur, it sometimes doesn’t matter, because people will cut backroom deals. So if people are interested with all the fires going on, not only should you be engaging on census policy matters, but now is the perfect time to engage on redistricting reform issues. Again, it’s that mid- decade time, when you have the time to look back and say like, ” Hey, what worked last cycle? What didn’t work? And what can we do to improve things?” Things off the top of my head could be improved transparency in the redistricting process, perhaps doing away with legislative privilege for the purposes of redistricting, so that people cannot hide their hands with respect to what they’re doing, ensuring that meetings are actually accessible to all different members of the community, so that geographically, meetings are not all being held in one place. One thing we learned from the pandemic is like, hey, maybe we can do virtual meetings, so we could reach more people, people that have busy schedules, maybe don’t do 9: 00 to 5:00. How can we make sure that we are engaging the public, who will be the actual constituents being represented, and that it’s not held within the hands of a few privileged, as Meeta had said earlier? So I think that that is certainly one area. I don’t know that it connects the dots for people, but it sets up a process and a system that will allow for actual accountability and representation that can then lead to the opportunity. So I recognize everything I said is not a quick fix. Everything I said, it’s going to take a while to see the fruits of our labor, but I think that is actually what is needed, because we need to really get this concept of census, redistricting, all of these issues into the fabric of people’s minds and thoughts about what it is to be a person residing in this country and being an active member of that.

Meeta Anand
Actually, so you just showed why you’re the VP of census and voting.

Kanya Bennett
That’s exactly right, Meeta. While this may take some time, certainly this contribution to the conversation as a start to show the intersection between census and voting, so thank you for that. And Brendan, last but not least, let me turn to you. Let me ask you about some takeaways for the listeners. You know, if we want data to remain a tool for democracy, are there protections or innovations that folks should be advocating for? Are there any other lessons from history that you want our listeners to understand and appreciate as they go forward?

Brendan Shanahan
And my answer’s going to build directly onto Terry’s last point, which is to resist the urge for quick fixes or one- size- fits- all solutions, in addition to the privacy protections that we’ve previously been discussing, must remain paramount. And I’ll draw from an example that comes up in my book at the state redistricting and reapportionment level, actually. In the 1930s, New York had gone a long time since its last reapportionment. It was supposed to do it every 10 years, hadn’t, and part of its state constitution at the time stated that non- citizens should be counted out for the purposes of state legislative reapportionment, not federal, but state. In that era, due to gross gerrymandering and malapportionment, it was very difficult for the Democrats to win both chambers of the state legislature, particularly the state assembly. Well, height of the New Deal, Democratic popularity, they win that trifecta for the first time in decades, the governor’s mansion and narrow majority in the state legislature. This should be the moment, and their leadership wanted to actually reapportion the state legislature to fulfill its state constitutional requirement as an act of fairness. The problem was actually applying the data to reapportion and then redistrict the state legislature, in particular using citizenship information at a local level of specificity that could accurately reflect the population. They asked the presidential administration at the time, former New York governor, now President Franklin Roosevelt, ” Hey, can you help us out? We’ve got this limited time window.” At the time, legislatures lasted one year, that was a length of a term, and they wanted to get it done before the end of the cycle. They send over some federal officials to try to cram it out, and there were enough errors produced in the process and allegations of errors that it became a political football, which that served as a pretext for opponents of the reapportionment to say, ” Nope, data’s not good enough. We can’t do it this year. We got to try harder, try harder, try harder.” And of course, the Democrats lose their majority in I believe the state assembly at the end of the next annual election, and the window for action to actually reapportion the legislature has passed. To your point, the lesson drawn from history there, Terry, is there was a very narrow time period. The avenue for advocates who were saying, ” Hey, the state constitution says we got to reapportion every 10 years, let’s go,” was very challenging. The attempt to get an outside fix rapidly, I think it did as a catch- all like, ” Okay, this is our one chance to get it done,” because they weren’t ready to go, or at least in part because they weren’t ready to go, that led to delay an eventual stymieing of a reapportionment, which is, again, at the basis of fairness and constitutional law, saying that everyone should count. We should update this with the best data we have available on a regular basis.

Kanya Bennett
All right, y’all, this has been a fascinating conversation, and sadly, our time together has reached a close. Brendan, thank you for joining us today.

Brendan Shanahan
It’s a real pleasure. Thank you, Kanya, and thank you to Terry and Meeta for a wonderful conversation.

Kanya Bennett
Terry, it was great to have you here. We appreciate your time and your expertise.

Terry Ao Minnis
Thank you so much for having me here today.

Kanya Bennett
And Meeta, our loyal listener and all- star guests, thank you so much for taking time to hop on Pod For The Cause.

Meeta Anand
I can think of no better way to have spent an hour of my day with such a wonderful, glorious host and incredible co- panelists.

Kanya Bennett
As you heard on today’s episode and the earlier ones this season, the fight for Civil Rights and democracy is more urgent now than ever. Here are three actions you can take, which you can find in our show transcript. Raise your voice, take the Leadership Conference pledge, commit to taking specific action over the next four years to protect our rights and our country, like speaking up when you see rights under attack in your community. Sign the pledge today. Stay informed, the Leadership Conference just made available a collection of information sourced from individuals, communities, and local governments who have experienced and responded to hate crimes. The goal is to get to safe and inclusive communities, where no one is targeted for who they are. Read and use the Community Resilience Toolkit. And take action, check if your state lawmakers were among the 242 state legislators who joined with the Civil Rights community urging the White House to reverse course on its reckless agenda to destroy the US Department of Education. State lawmaker voices are needed here. Thank you for joining us today on Pod For The Cause, the official podcast of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Leadership Conference Education Fund. For more information, please visit civilrights.org, and to connect with us, hit us up on Instagram and Twitter @civilrightsorg. You can text us, text civil rights, that’s two words, civil rights to 52199, to keep up with our latest updates. Be sure to subscribe to our show on your favorite podcast app and leave a five- star review. Thanks to our production team, Shalonda Hunter, Dena Craig, Taylor Nicholas, and Oprah Cunningham, my colleagues at the Leadership Conference. And shout out to Podville Media, our external production crew. And that’s it from me, your host, Kanya Bennett. Until next time, let’s keep fighting for an America as good as its ideals.

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