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74 Chapter Three EVERY TWENTY YEARS the constitutionally mandated decennial census in the United States falls on a presidential election year. In 2000, just as the census mail-back phase got underway, the census became briefly embroiled in the partisan rancor of the heated political environment. Given the broad and bipartisan support for the census mobilization campaign, the Census Bureau had not anticipated such intense and politically charged criticism directed at the census long form, which had just reached one-sixth of America’s households. The criticism was focused on the issue of privacy and the question of whether the census long form was an unwarranted government intrusion. When the privacy debate erupted suddenly, not only was it loud and widespread, but it presented the Census Bureau with an unexpected management crisis at the exact point when census operations were at their most vulnerable. The first complaint came from conservative talk show hosts and editorial writers. Late night comics were quick to chime in, as did political leaders, from small-town mayors to a presidential candidate. George W. Bush told the press that he understood “why people don’t want to give over that information to the government. If I had the long form, I’m not so sure I would do it either” (Albany Times Union 2000). The Senate got into the act, passing a nonbinding resolution urging that “no American be prosecuted, fined, or in any way harassed by the federal government” for not answering certain questions on the census long form. The Senate was in effect telling the public it was acceptable to ignore what had always been a legal obligation—to complete the census form, short or long. More generally, with elections approaching, Republican politicians were quick to denounce the census long form as a violation of privacy. The census became a poster child for an “invasive federal government.” Congressman Robert W. Schaffer (R-Colo.), who received the long form, Privacy Concerns and Census Cooperation Privacy Concerns and Census Cooperation 75 said he found some questions “too nosy.” Saying he would not answer all of them, Schaffer added: “I’m happy to voluntarily cooperate with the government in areas where I decide it makes sense. Beyond that, it starts to meet the definition of intrusive.” The Republican Senate majority leader, Trent Lott (R-Miss.), urged voters to skip any questions they felt violated their privacy. His Senate colleague Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) similarly advised the public to “just fill out what you need to fill out, and [not] anything you don’t feel comfortable with.” Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said he was “appalled and outraged by the intrusiveness” of the long-form questions. He argued that “it is ridiculous for the Census Bureau to ask personal questions that have nothing to do with their constitutional mandate to count the citizens of the United States” (Cohn 2000). Six congressional bills were introduced (none passed) that would have seriously affected the ability of the Census Bureau to collect long-form data, an indication of how much attention was drawn to the controversy. These strong criticisms of the census were widely covered by the press, but that in itself does not tell us what the public heard or how it reacted. Did the privacy controversy depress cooperation with the census? If so— and we report in this chapter that it did—was this only among those who received the long form or was it among the general population? And did it affect recipients’ willingness to return the long form in its entirety, or did it more often lead them to skip questions they considered intrusive, as the politicians were recommending? We proceed in two steps: first, with survey and experimental data we directly link the privacy controversy and reported census behavior; second, and necessarily more inferentially, we consider whether actual census behavior, as reported by the Census Bureau, was influenced by the privacy outcry. From the perspective of mass communication theories, especially the framing literature described earlier, the eruption of the privacy controversy at the height of the mobilization campaign offers a fascinating case of a strongly positive frame being confronted with a strongly negative one— the first urging cooperation and the second offering reasons not to cooperate . Both messages, as seen by the public, had the endorsement of political leaders, though the negative message was more selectively endorsed. The criticism of the census was voiced almost exclusively by Republicans and conservative media, whereas the...

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