It won’t help for the 2010 census but Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) has passed a House amendment ordering the State Department and Census Bureau to conduct a study on how to best count overseas citizens, inlcuding LDS missionaries.
Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, persuaded the House on Wednesday to order the State Department and the Census Bureau to begin working together on ways to count Americans living abroad during the once-a-decade Census.
“It is unfair to Utah that the Census Bureau does not count (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) missionaries living overseas,” Matheson said.
He added, “After the 2000 Census, Utah narrowly missed getting a fourth seat in the U.S. House of Representatives because many LDS missionaries living abroad were not counted.” Final audits showed the state missed that seat by about 80 people.
The bill now awaits Senate consideration. Another attempt to get Utah a fourth seat via a compromise givinge D.C. its own congressional seat has apparently stalled permanently. My understanding is that Utah’s growth this last decade will garner it a new seat in the new census so this all may be for naught.
(Possibly) Related posts:
Tags: lds, missionaries
-
This is a bad idea with so much to lose so little to be gained. It is an opening for mischief to make the census anything other than a count of people who happen to be where they are at the time of counting.
-
You have a very valid concern. Opening the census to more exceptions, and manipulation is a not a good thing.
If they had counted the missionaries in the 2000 census, it probably would have made a difference but probably not in 2010.
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link: http://asoftanswer.com/2009/06/12/census-study-to-determine-how-to-count-missionaries-abroad/trackback/