The 2010 Census: Count Question Resolution Program (CRS Report for Congress)
| Release Date |
Dec. 7, 2012 |
| Report Number |
R42092 |
| Report Type |
Report |
| Authors |
Jennifer D. Williams, Specialist in American National Government |
| Source Agency |
Congressional Research Service |
Summary:
As data products from the 2010 decennial census continue to be disseminated, officials of some jurisdictions and the Members who represent these jurisdictions in Congress may have questions about the accuracy of the census counts for their areas. The Bureau of the Census's Count Question Resolution (CQR) Program offers local officials a means to challenge certain 2010 census figures on the basis of detailed mapping evidence that they present to the Census Bureau.
The Bureau announced the 2010 census CQR Program in a March 8, 2011, Federal Register notice and began accepting CQR challenges on June 1, 2011. It will accept challenges only from official representatives of state, local, or tribal area governments; will review challenges in the order it receives them; will not collect any new data to resolve CQR challenges; will not revise any 2010 census data products, such as the counts for apportioning the U.S. House of Representatives and the data for within-state redistricting; and will not consider challenges received after June 1, 2013, the date the program ends.
The Bureau will consider only three types of challengesâboundary, geocoding, and coverageâeach of which must be documented appropriately on census maps. Boundary challenges allege inaccurate reporting or recording of boundaries legally in effect as of January 1, 2010. Geocoding challenges concern suspected errors in the location of living quarters addresses on census maps. Coverage challenges refer to the possibility that some living quarters and their residents were mistakenly included in the 2010 census as duplicates or excluded because of processing errors. The Bureau has posted its Guidelines for Stateside Count Question Resolution (CQR) Challenges on the CQR website, at http://2010.census.gov/2010census/about/cqr.php. The document explains how to prepare and submit 2010 CQR challenges, provides links to the maps the Bureau will accept for challenges, and gives instructions for annotating the maps correctly.
If the Bureau upholds a governmental unit's challenge, it will issue corrected 2010 population and living quarters counts to the jurisdiction. These corrections will constitute new official 2010 counts, which the governmental unit may use going forward, in programs that require 2010 data. The Bureau also will incorporate all CQR corrections into the 2010 census file used to make annual postcensal estimates for the years following the 2010 census, beginning with the estimates issued in December 2012. Because postcensal estimates, together with other census data, are the basis for distributing more than $450 billion a year in federal program funds to states and localities, local officials, especially, could seek the greatest possible accuracy for program data.
As of November 29, 2012, the Bureau had received 179 CQR challenges to the 2010 census counts from jurisdictions in 33 states, plus one challenge from the District of Columbia. In the 2000 census CQR Program, 1,180 out of about 39,000 U.S. jurisdictions submitted challenges, and the Bureau added about 2,700 people to the 2000 enumeration of 281.4 million.
