The Republican Lawyer Blog : Census, ACORN

Booked

Chris Berg — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:54:00 GMT

The other day I was asked why I'm so hard on the Washington Post. My friend refused to believe me when I cited the bias that was evident in most articles. She couldn't or wouldn't wrap her head around it. I assured her, it's purely ideological. She wasn't having it. She kept searching for something more. Did they endorse an opponent of one of my friends? Maybe, but that's just additional evidence of their bias. Are you mad you weren't invited to the "salon" dinner where the Post prostituted out its newsroom to the highest bidder? Maybe, but again, liberal elites selling out to the highest bidder is nothing new. Are you mad they shortened their Sunday book section to one page? I still say it's the liberal bias in the paper, but I do miss reading through the Sunday literary section of the Post. One page just isn't enough to provide meaningful book reviews, sales data, and lists of upcoming events.

I'm going to help fill that void. Every Friday I'm going to post a column called "Booked". It's going to be a quick and dirty review of a book that's caught and kept my interest that week. While I await the arrival of my pre-ordered Barnes and Noble Nook, I'll be sifting through the stacks and stacks of books I just haven't had time to get around to yet and at the very least this will help me work through the backlog. What you can expect is a review of a timely book on law or politics. My literary preferences are generally more accessible than obscure tomes on healthcare or Fifteenth Century monarchs. This week I'm going to ease you in slowly with a pithy, though very important book, written by Wall Street Journal Columnist John Fund.

John's latest monograph is called How the Obama Administration Threatens to Undermine Our Elections. While brief, this book covers important developments in elections and the Obama Administration's ability to impact future elections.

Fund covers the story of how Obama's Justice Department dropped charges against the Black Panthers for voter intimidation, a case which they'd already won.

He addresses the impact that the Obama Administration will have on the Census. Fund notes that Obama moved to remove the Census from the Commerce Department and install it in his political White House. He also discusses the problems that sampling would cause.

He covers the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the Obama Administration's desire for "universal voter registration".

As if these warning signs weren't enough, he rounds out the book with an important discussion of ACORN. Fund is right, if the Obama Administration follows through on its partisan agenda, the voters will be the ones who lose.

No excuses my friends, it's a brief 35 pages and costs less than $6. If you enjoy it, which I guarantee you will, be sure to pick up John's previous bestseller Stealing Elections.

Census Chief Disputes GAO Findings

Chris Berg — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:11:00 GMT

Remember Robert Groves? He's the man that President Obama tapped to run the Census. He received a lot of press when after considerable public pressure he terminated ACORN as a partner organization to the Census. If you recall Congressional leaders like Representative Michelle Bachmann had led the charge to expose ACORN and the danger it posed if it were to be given any responsibility for completing the Census.

Yesterday we posted the story of the GAO Director of Strategic Issues Robert Goldenkoff revealing that more than 200 criminals had slipped through the cracks and received jobs canvassing for the Census. He did the math, he ran the numbers, he found:

Goldenkoff testified that of the 1,800 workers with criminal backgrounds, 750 -- or 42 percent -- were terminated because of their records, which included crimes like rape, manslaughter and child abuse.

But about 22 percent of the 162,000 hired so far to conduct the census had "unclassifiable prints" that could not be processed by the FBI because of errors that occurred when the prints were made. Goldenkoff said that, as a result, it was possible 200 individuals with such unclassifiable prints had criminal records but worked anyway.

"Applying these same percentages to the approximately 600,000 people the bureau plans to fingerprint for non-response follow-up, unless the problems with fingerprinting are addressed, we estimate that approximately 785 employees with unclassifiable prints could have disqualifying criminal records but still end up working for the bureau," he said. (Courtesy of Fox News)

This has the potential to be as scandalous as ACORN employees coming to your door at the government's behest. Yesterday Census Director Robert Groves disputed these numbers. He announced "That goes in the direction of suggesting the count of 200 may be an overestimate." Robert Groves needs to get in front of this issue; he needs to put in safeguards to ensure that the Census will not employ criminals to knock on your door. With ACORN it took months of pressure from Members of Congress and the media before he did the right thing. He can't provide an accurate count of the criminals that the Census employs. Let's hope he's more accurate with the Census numbers.

Census Workers' Fingerprints Get Closer Look

By Carol Morello
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The head of the Census Bureau said Tuesday that the number of convicted criminals who were hired to check home addresses this summer is probably fewer than the 200 estimated by the Government Accountability Office.

Robert Groves said the bureau is trying to determine whether it is feasible to require a second security check on job candidates whose fingerprints cannot be read the first time they are run through the FBI database. The bureau is spending $100 million this year checking fingerprints, the first time it has done so for temporary workers.

Last week, the GAO said it estimated that more than 200 temporary employees with unreadable prints might have criminal records that should have disqualified them from being hired.

Groves said people whose prints are hard to decipher tend to be older workers whose ridges have worn down with age or manual workers whose jobs have made their prints less sharp. The average age of temporary census workers with unreadable prints was 63 for men and 55 for women.

"That goes in the direction of suggesting the count of 200 may be an overestimate," Groves said.

The GAO report was based on a Census Bureau internal evaluation of its fingerprinting program. More than 1 million people applied for temporary jobs. About 16 percent did not pass the initial screening of an FBI check on their names for a variety of reasons, including criminal backgrounds.

People who passed the name check were then asked to submit fingerprints. FBI fingerprint checks then eliminated 1 percent, or almost 1,800 people; of those, about 750 were fired because they had committed serious crimes such as rape, manslaughter and child abuse.

Of the remaining group of hires, one in five had unreadable prints. Based on its experience with the group that had readable fingerprints, the GAO estimated that 200 others who had unreadable prints might have criminal backgrounds. About 151,000 people were hired to do address canvassing, which involves knocking on doors to determine whether an address is correct. In some cases, the jobs lasted as little as a day or two.

The Census Bureau has since altered its training of employees who gather fingerprints, aiming to improve the quality of their work. Some tips are as simple as using hand lotion to better bring out the ridges.

The Census Bureau expects to hire about 700,000 temporary workers next year to do follow-up home visits to people who do not mail in their census form.

"Americans must be confident that, if they don't mail back their census forms next March and a census taker must come to their door to count them, we've taken every step to ensure their safety," Groves said.

Knock, Knock

Chris Berg — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:04:00 GMT

Representative Bachmann led the charge for ACORN's removal from involvement in the Census. Long before the Census saw fit to cut ties with ACORN she had warned of the danger of ACORN being in any way responsible for collecting Census data:

"The past three days have brought to light further evidence that ACORN is untrustworthy and not worthy of being a partner for the 2010 census," said Bachmann. "These additional findings are disturbing and merely solidify my original and long-standing position that an organization with a continuous cloud of suspicion should be banned from receiving taxpayer dollars. So long as this cloud of suspicion hangs over ACORN, I am afraid that its partnership with the Bureau could jeopardize the integrity of the census process and diminish the public's trust in the Census."

Some were dismissive of her concerns, after all, the Census was supposed to have safeguards in place to protect the personal data collected. Background checks were going to be conducted, fingerprints were going to be taken. Last week the GAO informed Congress that these safeguards had fallen through and as many as 200 criminals who should have been disqualified from working on the Census were canvassing neighborhoods, knocking on doors, and collecting personal information. Who could have seen this coming?

GAO: Criminals May Have Been Hired to Assist in 2010 Census

Fingerprinting errors made by U.S. Census Bureau employees may have resulted in the hiring of 200 people with criminal backgrounds to conduct door-to-door canvassing, according to the Government Accountability Office.

In testimony before a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday, GAO Director of Strategic Issues Robert Goldenkoff said tens of thousands of temporary census workers were improperly fingerprinted by bureau employees -- including individuals with extensive criminal records.

"It is possible that more than 200 people with unclassifiable prints had disqualifying criminal records but still worked, and had contact with the public during address canvassing," he said.

Goldenkoff's testimony, part of a larger progress report on the bureau's implementation of the 2010 Census, identified key pitfalls in the hiring of the nearly 1.4 million temporary workers needed to go door-to-door to count every person in the U.S. -- including "weaknesses in the bureau's information technology."

The bureau implemented fingerprinting for the first time in 2010 to better screen its workers. According to the new guidelines, bureau employees are directed to obtain two sets of fingerprint cards for each prospective worker -- and then send them to the bureau's processing center in Jeffersonville, Ind., where are they scanned and submitted to the FBI. If the candidate is found to have a criminal record, making him ineligible for employment, the bureau is "to either terminate the person immediately or place the individual in nonworking status until the matter is resolved."

If the first set of prints is deemed "unclassifiable," the bureau's processing center must send the second set of fingerprints to the FBI for processing.

Goldenkoff testified that of the 1,800 workers with criminal backgrounds, 750 -- or 42 percent -- were terminated because of their records, which included crimes like rape, manslaughter and child abuse.

But about 22 percent of the 162,000 hired so far to conduct the census had "unclassifiable prints" that could not be processed by the FBI because of errors that occurred when the prints were made. Goldenkoff said that, as a result, it was possible 200 individuals with such unclassifiable prints had criminal records but worked anyway.

"Applying these same percentages to the approximately 600,000 people the bureau plans to fingerprint for non-response follow-up, unless the problems with fingerprinting are addressed, we estimate that approximately 785 employees with unclassifiable prints could have disqualifying criminal records but still end up working for the bureau," he said.

The GAO said the Census Bureau is working to address the errors by improving the image quality for the fingerprints and by improving instruction manuals for its workers.