In a recent court filing and press release, the U.S. Census Bureau appears to be open to the possibility of delivering untabulated data by mid to late August to requesting states if they take the responsibility for reporting the data accurately.
In its litigation in federal court in Ohio, which sued the Bureau for missing its statutory deadline to provide redistricting data to states – the Bureau filed a declaration explaining in detail its operational limitations for delivering the data files before the Sept 30 deadline it announced weeks ago. In doing so, it acknowledged that it was physically possible to deliver the data in an older, untabulated format – a form not readily usable without some sophisticated modifications:
“It would be possible to have fully reviewed redistricting data for all States available by mid to late August, but the data would be in an older format of data the Census Bureau developed decades ago . . . In order to be used correctly, the files must be imported into a database, relationships must be established between the files, and the State must pull a subset of records in those files and fields for only the geography and data categories the State wants to use.”
The declaration goes on in detail about the data processing schedule, the Bureau’s reasoning for releasing data to all states simultaneously, and why focusing on releasing a fully processed file (not the untabulated file) to Ohio would actually cause a later data delivery for remaining states.
Just three days after submitting its declaration to the court, the Bureau released the press release below, which appears to offer time-strapped states a 4 to 6-week jump on the Sept 30 delivery date. The catch, of course, is that the data will not be organized into tables and will be in an older digital format. It is unclear how difficult it would be for software vendors to read and tabulate the data or what the legal ramifications would be for states going forward should they use the data this way.
Press Release: U.S. Census Bureau Statement on Release of Legacy Format Summary Redistricting Data File
MARCH 15, 2021 — In declarations recently filed in the case of Ohio v. Raimondo, the U.S. Census Bureau made clear that we can provide a legacy format summary redistricting data file to all states by mid-to-late August 2021. Because we recognize that most states lack the capacity or resources to tabulate the data from these summary files on their own, we reaffirm our commitment to providing all states tabulated data in our user-friendly system by Sept. 30, 2021.
On Feb. 12, 2021, the Census Bureau announced that it will deliver the Public Law 94.171 redistricting data to all states by Sept. 30, 2021. Processing of 2020 Census data is proceeding as expected, and we expect to meet our previously announced deadline for the redistricting data release.
In recognition of the difficulties this timeline creates for states with redistricting and election deadlines prior to Sept. 30, we have reviewed our timeline to identify any opportunities to shorten the processing schedule. Our review confirms that all steps of data processing and formatting will be complete by Sept. 30. However, the final steps in our process include creating “tabulations” (data tables) from the data we have collected for each state and creating a user-friendly system for data access. We have determined that states should be given the opportunity to use an outside vendor to process legacy format summary redistricting data files if states do not have the capacity to tabulate the data on their own. The declarations filed March 12 note that given the difficulty of using the data in this format, any state using legacy format summary redistricting data files would have to accept responsibility for how they process these files; whether correctly or incorrectly.
