Redistricting Collin County

Do the commissioners know how to count?

Bill Baumbach, in The Collin County Observer, reports that the Collin County Commissioners Court is proposing using its own county GIS estimates to draw new commissioners district boundaries now rather than wait for results of the 2010 federal census.

The argument in favor of the proposal is that the county has experienced booming population growth since the last census in 2000 and the current districts are unrepresentative of the current distribution of population in the county. No doubt, that's true. The argument is that the current boundaries are so out of balance that waiting for the 2010 census data is intolerable. Perhaps, that's true.

The argument against is that allowing the commissioners to be in charge of both counting heads and drawing boundaries creates too much opportunity for abuse. No doubt, that's true. The argument is that living with the current boundaries until 2010 census data is available is tolerable. Perhaps, that's true.

Baumbach comes down on the side of using independent federal census data, even though it's outdated. He's willing to live with boundaries known to be inaccurate, resulting in one person's vote carrying more weight than another's, until after 2010, in order to eliminate a source of potential abuse.

I come down on the side of using the most accurate information available. Sometimes, that's census data. Sometimes, it isn't. In this case, nine-year-old census data is clearly out of date. County GIS estimates might very well be more accurate. Baumbach doesn't say so, but I infer he believes that when the 2010 census data becomes available, it will be more accurate than the county GIS estimates. He says,

"[Collin County GIS staff] have plotted every home in the county, and then they use what they believe is the current average number of people per home to estimate the current population. The GIS staff believes this system, with some adjustments, is superior to methods used by state and COG demographers. The US Census uses a different method. It actually counts the number of people living at each address. A few years ago, attempts by some members of congress to allow the use of statistical estimates on 'hard to count' populations were shot down. Legislation was passed into law requiring that only actually counted people, instead of estimated counts be used for redistricting."

Counting people is not as simple as it sounds. Counting the homeless, the transient, those hiding from authorities, creditors or maybe just their families, all can be devilishly difficult. So much so that it's very easy to distort the results of a census just by how much effort the administrators decide to put into rooting out every last head to count. It's almost certainly true that the decennial federal census is not as accurate a count of heads as cross-checks and statistical corrections could make it.

If Baumbach opposes what's happening in Collin County because he thinks the current federal census methodology is the best possible way to count people, he's mistaken. It might or might not be more accurate than the county GIS estimates, but it's not as accurate as modern statistical methods could deliver if the census takers weren't forbidden by law from using modern methods. But as long as Baumbach sticks with his argument that Collin County commissioners can't be trusted to count people accurately, whether by doing a head count or by relying on methods of estimation, Baumbach may be on firmer ground.