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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2019
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
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Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
Keep politics out of the census
E
very 10 years, as one decade
transitions into the next, the
U.S. government conducts a
national census to count the number
of people living in the country.
It’s mandated by the Constitu-
tion, and since 1790 has been the
best large-scale way to account
for who’s living where. It has also
helped track demographic changes
in the country, but that’s not part of
the constitutional provision.
And that’s not to say it’s perfect.
Despite radical changes in technol-
ogy, we still go about the census in
roughly the same way as our Found-
ing Fathers did. Households fill
out a short questionnaire account-
ing for everyone living there. The
method leaves out the usual under-
represented people — homeless
and transient people, or those fear-
ful of checking in with the federal
government.
But it’s an important count,
because it dictates how federal
money is allocated and how rep-
resentatives are distributed. That’s
why it’s been mandated since our
country’s founding — to make sure
we’ve got an accurate starting point
for taxation and representation.
This year and next, millions of
hours and billions of dollars will be
spent making sure the count is as
accurate as it can be. But there’s an
effort afoot to rig what should be a
non-political undertaking.
Where past leaders have seen a
tool, President Donald Trump and
his administration see a weapon.
Sure, other elected officials of all
U.S. Census Bureau
The U.S. Census Bureau is preparing to begin the 2020 census, which may contain a
question about citizenship.
stripes have sought ways to skew
the census results. Gerrymandering
has become both an art and science
as legislators redraw districts based
on the numbers to secure power
and diminish the ability of oppo-
nents to build support. They twist
the straightforward count after it’s
collected.
But the move by Commerce Sec-
retary Wilbur Ross to add a question
about citizenship to the census is an
attempt to mess with the numbers
before they’re even counted.
It’s been presented as an honest
attempt to account for non-citizens
in the interest of enforcing the Vot-
ing Rights Act, and a practice with a
long history in the U.S.
On the second count, there’s
some truth. In the 1800s and early
1900s the census inquired about the
“naturalization” or citizenship of
respondents. In recent years, that
question has instead been asked in
other surveys by the Census Bureau
designed to track demographics and
immigration.
But on the first count, that this is
merely a curious government trying
to use its power of inquiry to squash
potential voter fraud, we’re doubt-
ful. Especially because the data
would shed no light on the Voting
Rights Act.
It looks more like an attempt
to limit responses from Hispan-
ics and illegal immigrants. It surely
would have that effect, regardless
the intent. By the government’s
own estimates, as many as 6.5 mil-
lion people would decline to partic-
ipate — about 2 percent of the total
population.
Representation, as dictated in the
Constitution, is tied to population
and not citizenship. And intention-
ally undercounting a specific group
of people is an ugly tactic.
The failure of the administra-
tion to listen to experts on the topic
— the nonpolitical Census Bureau
— is also concerning. Ross has
attempted to place the impetus for
the decision on the Department of
Justice, tasked with enforcing the
Voting Rights Act. But records show
it was he who requested the depart-
ment send a letter to the Census
Bureau asking to add the citizenship
question.
The debate about whether the
administration can add the question
is now before the Supreme Court
after a judge in a U.S. District Court
ruled it illegal on multiple counts
— from the fact that Ross missed
the deadline to adjust the census to
the fact that he didn’t attempt to use
readily available data to address the
Voting Rights Act. Skipping steps
and ignoring rules are often a sign
of either incompetence or malfea-
sance, and either way a blow to our
confidence in the administration.
The Supreme Court will make
its ruling. The census will be taken.
And it will either be an honest
attempt at a snapshot of people liv-
ing in this country or a rigged count
that leaves out a segment of the
population.
Either way, its findings will reso-
nate for the next decade and beyond.
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2009
Friday afternoon’s plane trip to Seattle turned into a
nightmare for former Astoria Mayor Edith Hennings-
gaard Miller when the plane, piloted by her son, Bill
Henningsgaard, had to crash-land in the Columbia River.
But the nightmare had a happy ending. They were
quickly rescued and had only very minor injuries.
Henningsgaard Miller recounted the ordeal the next
day. “We had just crossed over the hills in Washington,
when I said, ‘I didn’t notice this valley before and all
these houses.’”
Although she hadn’t realized it, the plane’s single
engine had suddenly stopped.
“He said ‘This is an emergency,’ and I didn’t say any-
thing else,” she said.
They were three-quarters of the way back to the Asto-
ria Regional Airport in Warrenton when Bill told his
mother, “We’re not going to make it,” and began glid-
ing down toward the river where he put the plane down.
At least 182 residents and visitors, along with
272 students, headed for the hills Friday east of
Seaside, and it was a lifesaving experience.
Despite the blast coming from six sirens her-
alding an emergency tsunami drill, most people
went about their daily business.
50 years ago — 1969
A State Highway Department official said today traf-
fic on the Astoria Bridge across the Columbia is running
about 70 vehicles per day behind what was expected for
1969.
Tom Edwards, assistant highway engineer, said from
Salem that much of the low figure should be blamed on
the series of snow storms around the first of the year.
Some loss has come, also, from unfavorable weather at
times when sports fishing would have been active.
Chuck Miles of Cannon Beach will be Asto-
ria’s representative at San Francisco’s first
Crab Cooking Olympics May 19 and 20. Miles’
expenses will be paid by Warrenton and Ham-
mond fishermen and processors.
Reopening an historic chapter of the Columbia Riv-
2009 — Former Astoria Mayor Edith Henningsgaard Miller and her son, pilot Bill Henningsgaard, a retired Microsoft
executive from Seattle, stand on the wing of the single-engine turboprop Epic LT aircraft that crashed into the Columbia
River. A crew from Foss Maritime was able to pull alongside the aircraft and bring them aboard.
er’s past, the Coast Guard will christen Cape Disappoint-
ment’s 52-foot motor lifeboat Triumph II in ceremonies
May 3 in Ilwaco.
The 52-footer is named for the Triumph, a wood-
en-hulled rescue boat of the same size lost at the Colum-
bia River bar Jan. 12, 1961, carrying five crewmen to
their deaths. The Triumph, and two other Coast Guard
boats, capsized in an attempt to save two fishermen
aboard the 40-foot crab fishing vessel Mermaid, in dis-
tress near Peacock Spit.
Astoria City Councilman Bill Wilson has an
idea for the heavy demands continually made
on the city treasury.
At a recent city budget session, he suggested
a way to cut down future budgets: put The Pill
in the city drinking water, to control population
growth.
The budget committee took no action on the
suggestion, which did not appear to be alto-
gether serious.
The bill to keep the ocean beaches open for the pub-
lic went through the House in Salem today with hardly
a murmur — in sharp contrast to the emotional fight
touched off two years ago.
75 years ago — 1944
Wayne L. Morse, Republican candidate for the U.S.
Senate, repeated and affirmed his nationally known dec-
larations of government by law in contrast to rule by
executive fiat before a large Astoria chamber of Com-
merce forum luncheon today at Amato’s supper club.
“It is my judgment that America now and immedi-
ately after the war is faced with the problem of solv-
ing the most critical issue which has faced here since
the Revolutionary war, and that is the issue of executive
government versus representative government.”
Astoria today was named as one of 20 new
cities which United Air Lines proposes to add
to its coast-to-coast and Pacific coast airway
network.
In an application filed with the civil aeronau-
tics board at Washington, United asked that
Astoria be connected on a feeder line with Pend-
leton and Portland on the company’s mid-conti-
nent transcontinental route.
C.J. Simpson, Northwest manager of the national
labor bureau, today disclosed members of fishermen’s
unions which the bureau represents refuse to travel to
Alaskan salmon fishing grounds aboard Liberty ships
“with a history of cracking open in Alaskan waters.”
The Columbia River fishing industry this
week opened a campaign to enlist services of
women, with emphasis on service men’s wives,
for part-time employment in canneries to han-
dle salmon and to work in cold storage opera-
tion, on filleting lines, packaging, wrapping and
crab packing.
Emphasizing the importance to the war
effort of producing as much food fish as pos-
sible, the industry set the keynote. “Fish pro-
duction is limited to the volume that may be
processed.”
The government is taking more than 50
percent of the Columbia River salmon pack,
directly for war purposes; and other govern-
ment purchasing divisions are taking huge
quantities of fillet and frozen fish.