ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 29, 1996 TAG: 9602290087
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Cox News Service
Counting on the millennium to restore the Census Bureau's reputation for accuracy, federal demographers pledged Wednesday to ``get it right the first time'' with a ``simpler, cheaper, faster and more accurate'' Census 2000.
Commerce Undersecretary Everett M. Ehrlich said the next national head count will combine new technology, sophisticated marketing, more statistical sampling and simplified questionnaires to avoid the problems encountered in 1990.
Although 98.4 percent of the populace was counted, many Americans considered the 1990 census to be a failure because it missed more than 4 million people, Ehrlich said.
Minorities, the urban poor and fast-growing Sun Belt states claimed to have been undercounted. Six years later, the Supreme Court is still considering a lawsuit brought by states and cities that say they were undercounted.
Congressional apportionment and the allocation of federal money are based on the census.
LENGTH: Short : 30 linesby CNB