Census Bureau (Congress, illegal, regular, ideologies)

[grew-up-3rd-culture]

Does the U.S. Census Bureau keep data on people according to ideologies they hold? If not, do you think the U.S. Census Bureau should?

[Greatday]

Originally Posted by grew-up-3rd-culture

Does the U.S. Census Bureau keep data on people according to ideologies they hold? If not, do you think the U.S. Census Bureau should?

To the best of my knowledge, no

No, they should not collect, nor keep, such data

[ontheroad]

The US Census Bureau does not collect information about people, it collects demographic data.

What is the purpose of this question? And isn't the government already peering into our windows, with or without blinds?

Originally Posted by grew-up-3rd-culture

Does the U.S. Census Bureau keep data on people according to ideologies they hold? If not, do you think the U.S. Census Bureau should?

[Evlevo]

To accurately chart political affiliation they would have to solicit it, which would (I think) be illegal... if not it is certainly wrong and basically a gift to the gerrymandering politicians.

Voting data is available by precinct, which (again in reference to the gerrymandering) is already too much info. To the average Joe like you and me it is kinda interesting... to a politician with the "redistricting pen" it is a tool to skew democracy.

[saganista]

Redistricting is required after each decennial census in order to preserve the one-man-one-vote concept. People are free to move around, and they do. Without redistricting, you'd soon have, among other things, one Congressperson representing 1,000,000 people and another representing 300,000 people. It's bad enough that we already have the roughly 510 thousand people in Wyoming having two Senators, while the roughly 36,130 thousand people in California have the same two Senators, and the roughly 550 thousand people in DC don't have any Senators at all, but for better or worse, that's the way the Senate is set up. The House, however, is supposed to have proportional representation -- currently about one Representative for each 700 thousand people, but with a minimum of one per state. Without some redistricting at regular intervals, you could never maintain that.

Problems routinely arise because the Supreme Court has taken a pretty much hands-off approach to the actual process of redistricting, leaving the particulars to each state to implement on its own. That puts power into the hands of whichever party happens to control a state's politics, and they aren't about to pass that power off to anyone else. That power will be retained, and it will be used to protect the prospects of party favorites in particular and to preserve the prospects of the party in general. If things get too egregious, plans can be challenged in court and often are. That keeps a rein at least on some of the worst excesses of partisanship, but without the one-man-one-vote rule and concurrent periodic redistricting, you'd have excesses that were far worse and no way to restrain them at all.