Ever since Barack Obama won the presidency, right-wing paranoia about the Census has run rampant. But what few people realize is that Census officials themselves are equally paranoid about protecting the privacy of the information we provide. Protection begins with a 72-year seal on personal information in our Census responses:

Doris Turner, the partnership specialist for the Census Bureau serving several counties including Coweta, emphasized the confidential nature of Census form data in a recent meeting with the Coweta County Complete County[sic] Committee.

"It's sealed for 72 years," she said of the information. Census employees take an oath "that they will not divulge anybody's information," Turner said. The nondisclosure oath is for life.

The penalty for unlawful disclosure is a fine of up to $250,000 or imprisonment of up to five years, or both.

In other words, it won’t be until 2082 that historians or genealogists will be able to use Census data, for instance, to find out if I owned or rented my home this year.

In the mean time, all data released by the Census Bureau has had personally identifiable information (e.g. phone numbers, names, etc.) struck from it. But the Bureau doesn’t stop there -- it also goes to great lengths to make sure no one can reverse-engineer a way to identify anyone through the data they release. Even if it means altering entire data sets just to protect one person:

Suppose there is only one 65-year-old married woman attending college in North Dakota, and that her response was released by the Census Bureau. Then researchers would know everything else she told the agency, including, perhaps, her income and her parents' birthplace.

To protect the privacy of such unusual individuals and households, the government manipulates data, using several techniques that were described in a 2005 Census Bureau paper. Numbers are rounded, so incomes of $80,600 and $81,400 would both be recorded as $81,000. What statisticians refer to as "noise" is added to some ages—a year or two older or younger, perhaps.

Also, outlier values are averaged together, and that average is assigned to every one of those outliers. For instance, the top half-percent of earners would each be assigned the average income of that wealthy subgroup, so that, say, Warren Buffett's census questionnaire can't be identified. And people with especially unique characteristics might be moved across the country, in a kind of statistical witness protection program, so that entry for the North Dakotan woman might be changed to show her living in Alabama.

This additional “noise” is a source of constant irritation for some economists, sociologists, and other researchers using Census data in their research, but it shows just how far the Census Bureau goes protects the information it collects.

So the next time a Republican (like the commenters on the two articles cited above) tells you he’s too scared to fill out his Census form… tell him to take off the tin-foil hat.

Today is the first day that Census questionnaires begin arriving in mailboxes around the country. And since every uncounted individual costs his or her local government nearly $1,400 in lost federal funding, filling out that form is one of the simplest ways to help your community.

Additionally, for every 1 percent of American households that fill out and return their Census questionnaires by mail, taxpayers save nearly $85 million. With so much at stake in the process, top-level Census officials are pulling out all the stops to encourage Census participation, including (for the first time) a daily online report of participation rates around the country:

It also is hoping to motivate cities, counties and local communities to get involved. In 2000, both dense urban cities and sprawling rural areas -- from Alabama and California to Michigan and New York -- faced problems with an undercount, particularly in areas with larger shares of lower-income residents.

Beginning next week, the Census Bureau will publish daily real-time data on 2010 mail-back participation rates for the U.S. broken down by state, county, city and zip code. Ron Loveridge, president of the National League of Cities and the mayor of Riverside, Calif., is challenging mayors to see who can get the highest participation rate.

These data will give us the first clues about which states will struggle to earn their fair share of congressional representation and federal funding.

Karl Rove and the Republican Party’s road back to power runs through redistricting. That’s what Rove himself said in an editorial in this week’s Wall St. Journal:

To understand the broader political implications, consider that the GOP gained somewhere between 25 and 30 seats because of the redistricting that followed the 1990 census. Without those seats, Republicans would not have won the House in 1994.

Control of redistricting also has huge financial implications. The average winner of a competitive House race in 2008 spent $2 million, while a noncompetitive seat can be defended for far less than half that amount. Moving, say, 20 districts from competitive to out-of-reach could save a party $100 million or more over the course of a decade.

We all remember what happened after the GOP wave in 1994. Health care reform – and many other progressive priorities -- was effectively dead for another 15 years, even when Bill Clinton was still president.

Once George Bush and Karl Rove got to the White House, they and the Republican majority in Congress did more damage to this country in six short years than many of us thought possible. Wars. Torture. An economy in shambles. The list goes on and on.

The country can’t afford to go through that all over again. But that’s exactly what could happen if we don’t fight back.

Former Texas Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby wrote a fascinating article for the Houston Chronicle last week about the history of redistricting in the United States. Hobby covers the Voting Rights Act, Baker v. Carr, and even Reconstruction-era reapportionment fights.

One of the most interesting stories to us is about how 19th Century Republicans had a near-immediate case of buyer’s remorse when they realized that freeing the slaves would up-end the infamous “Three-Fifths Compromise” that had counted each slave as only 3/5 of a person in congressional reapportionment:

The original Constitution said only three-fifths of the slaves were to be counted for apportionment. When the North won the Civil War, Congress abolished slavery by the 13th Amendment, thereby putting the other two-fifths of the slaves into the apportionment base.

That would have given the Confederate states 16 more seats in Congress and new electoral votes — enough to give the Democrats control of Congress and elect a president.

Hobby discusses several strategies Republicans tried to offset the expected Southern gains, but the situation was ultimately defused because of strong growth in Western states, severe under-counting of African-Americans and Southerners in the 1870 Census, and Civil War casualties which offset the end of the 3/5-era.

The article has a whole host of stories from later years, and it’s well-worth a read. And of course, if you’d like more information about these topics, RedistrictingFacts.com has fact sheets about the Supreme Court and Redistricting, the Voting Rights Act and Redistricting, and redistricting law in each state.

The Rose Institute at Claremont McKenna College has published another in-depth guide to redistricting, this time focusing on the Florida. With a non-partisan redistricting ballot measure in 2010, Voting Rights Act requirements, and the addition of at least one new congressional seat, the Sunshine State is expecting one of the most interesting redistricting battles anywhere in the country:

An initiative called FairDistricts will be on the ballot in 2010 proposing a constitutional amendment to restrict gerrymandering. It would require the legislature to draw compact districts that conform to pre-existing political and geographic boundaries. Currently the only restrictions on redistricting in the state are that all districts must be contiguous and the map must follow federal law and the Voting Rights Act. (…) If the Fair Districts initiative passes, it will leave control of redistricting in the Legislature’s hands but impose significant restrictions on how it can draw the lines. The degree of that control will almost certainly be the subject of multiple post-redistricting lawsuits.

In addition to the legal and constitutional issues, Florida is also a very diverse state, politically, ethnically, and geographically. The Rose Institute report delves into all these factors, in every major region of the state. It’s well worth a read.

For a primer on how Florida conducts redistricting, a state-by-state fact sheet is available over at Redistricting Facts.

In North Carolina, both political parties are paying particularly close attention to this year's state legislative elections:

That is because the legislature, as required by the U.S. Constitution, will draw new district maps for the legislature and for Congress in 2011 based on the census that will be conducted this year. Whether those maps are drawn by Democrats or Republicans - or jointly by both parties - could go a long way in deciding who holds power in Raleigh and who goes to Washington.

Democrats currently control both houses of the legislature, and leaders like Speaker Joe Hackney aren't downplaying the stakes for 2010:

"The conventional wisdom is that the election preceding redistricting is the most important one of the decade. I would not quarrel with that. We have seen redistricting make a big difference in legislative bodies."

For their part, Republicans are telling reporters that they are optimistic about their chances in this year's legislative races. But Democrats aren't taking the threat lightly. They're already hard at work recruiting strong candidates and laying the groundwork for victories this fall.

Though Census Day is nearly two months away, in Alaska, the count has already started. On Monday, World War II veteran Clifton Jackson, an 88-year old resident of Noorvik, became the first citizen registered in the 2010 Census.

While the rest of the country must wait until April 1, the complexities involved with conducting a census in Alaska force officials to begin with the state:

The largest state in the union stretches across 586,000 square miles. That's more than twice the size of Texas, the biggest state in the Lower 48. Yet Alaska has one of the nation's smallest populations at less than 700,000.

More than 260,000 live in Anchorage, the state's largest city. About 13% of residents are American Indian and Alaska Native, and almost half of Alaskans live in rural areas. Many live in villages so remote they are not connected to roads and receive mail through a post office box.

Mailing the Census forms to these far-off places won't work because the Census must count people where they live, not where they pick up their mail. If the questionnaires can't be delivered to a street address, Census takers bring the forms in person.

In Noorvik, the Census is a cause for celebration, and the count was ushered in with traditional dancing by local residents.

After Census officials have determined which states gained and lost population over the course of the last decade, congressional districts will be reallocated. States which grew in large numbers will add seats, while states which shrunk will lose them.

For some time, demographers have predicted that Texas will gain seats. The question now is how many.

Some experts -- like William Frey from the Brookings Institution -- now believe that refugees from Hurricane Katrina could tip the balance for the state:

Demographers predict Texas will add at least three new districts, and the evacuees who stayed after the 2005 storm – experts estimate between 50,000 and 100,000 did so – could provide the margin for a fourth seat.

That news makes this set of legislative races in Texas even more important. Republicans hold a slim one-seat majority in the House of Representatives, but if they retain control of the legislature, they'll have a significant advantage when it comes time to draw the new lines for the state's Congressional districts.

Democrats have an all too fresh reminder of how Republicans will approach redistricting if they control every lever of power. In 2003, the GOP -- led by Tom Delay -- forced through a controversial mid-decade plan that reduced Democratic Congressional seats in the state from 15 to 11.

We can't let them do that again. After this election, we must have a seat at the table.

After the Census, most states will meet to redraw legislative districts for their local lawmakers (in addition to the lines for members of Congress). In Alaska, a group of legislators is pushing a proposal to expand the size of of both chambers:

The proposed constitutional amendment, introduced by Rep. Peggy Wilson of Wrangell, would increase the number of House members from 40 to 48 and those in the Senate from 20 to 24. It is similar to a proposal previously raised on the Senate side.

While any expansion proposal must pass many hurdles, we'll continue to watch this situation.

Coordination is one of the biggest keys to a complete Census count. That’s why a new coalition between advocates for African-Americans and first generation immigrants -- two of the most chronically-undercounted minority groups -- might pay dividends:

Civil rights organizations and advocates for the growing Caribbean and African immigrant population are setting aside differences and have formed the Unity Diaspora Coalition to push all blacks to fill out the federal forms. They vow to keep the coalition alive well beyond this year's Census — through the midterm elections, redistricting battles and all the way to the 2020 Census.

"We need the numbers," says Benjamin Afrifa, chairman and CEO of the African Federation, a group he founded in 2005. "The 2010 Census is an opportunity for us to go out there, mobilize the community. … We realize that we cannot do this in isolation." (…)

The coalition is spreading the Census message from Haitian festivals in New York and Miami and Nigerian community events in Houston to black churches in rural Mississippi and NAACP chapter meetings in Chicago.

By making sure everyone pulls in the same direction when it comes to the Census, the coalition hopes to eliminate confusion about how to respond to Census questionnaires and raise awareness of the importance of the process for minority communities.

Political representation after redistricting and $400 billion in federal funding are at stake in the 2010 Census, money that supports everything from schools to local health clinics.