Mon, Jul 14, 2008 (2:08 a.m.)

Less than two years from now the Census Bureau will fan out across this country for the official national head count that takes place every decade. The results of the 2010 Census, like those of its predecessors, will have overwhelming influence over government-funded programs that grant money based on population and other demographic features.

The neediest groups in terms of government support happen to include racial minorities and poor people. Yet these are the very groups demographic experts say are most at risk of being undercounted because they are not as likely to have fixed addresses and may be less willing than other groups to return Census forms by mail.

The fear, as The Washington Post reported last week, is that the bureau is not prepared to do the door-to-door follow-up necessary to ensure these groups are counted correctly.

If these groups are undercounted, it stands to reason the programs they rely on will not receive enough money to serve them adequately. Many deserving people, including Southern Nevadans, would be cut off from services through no fault of their own.

The bureau’s situation became apparent in April when it scuttled plans to replace the traditional paper and pencil surveys with handheld computers to collect information door-to-door. That’s because the computers were not programmed properly and many census workers could not figure out how to use them. Things got worse when the bureau decided that month to scale back a test run of the 2010 Census because there wasn’t enough time to train workers unfamiliar with the old paper and pencil methods.

If the bureau cannot clean up its own mess, Congress must step in. The bill for the bureau’s blunder will be steep, as much as $3 billion on top of the $11.5 billion budgeted so far for the next census. That money will have to be spent on the paper-based surveys that were not in the original budget.

But the cost for racial minorities and poor people could be far more devastating because of the terrible human toll that would be taken if they are denied housing, health care, educational opportunities or other social services because of the bureau’s counting errors.