The critical 2020 Census, used to divvy up the federal budget and draw House districts, has a big problem.
According to congressional oversight committees, the Census Bureau is planning to tap a database that in the past has counted the dead as living — and the living as dead.
At issue is the bureau’s plan to use several government databases as a way to build in accuracy. But one of those, the Social Security Administration’s Numident system, has a checkered past, according to a warning letter sent to the Census from Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
In their letter, shared with Secrets, auditors in 2015 and this year found several accuracy problems, but the recommended fixes have come slowly.
In one inspector general’s report cited by the committees, 6.5 million living people were listed as 112 years old. But there are only three people that old on record.
In another audit, 188,000 Californians were listed as “likely deceased” but there was no verification of their deaths on file. And a Government Accountability Office report raised questions about fraud in the Census counting system.
The Census, which plans to deal with the questions from the committee, has several records to use in counting the U.S. population. The committees urged a second look at the files before settling on one.
The chairmen said, for example, that the Social Security Administration “often fails to update it when a person dies and frequently marks living people as deceased.”
The administration is seeking an infusion of money to get the Census ready for the 2020 count. It has been slow to name a director or even deputy director, leading to Democratic charges that the administration isn’t interested in it out of concern it may lead to House redistricting that could cost the GOP seats.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
