The US census, redistricting, and technology - A 30-year perspective

Since 1790, apportionment of political power among states has been the constitutional purpose for the national census. Since 1970, the Census Bureau has played an additional role and has provided the population data for the intrastate redistricting process. Evolving case law and advancing technology changed the landscape of players and methods, but the census information has remained the common denominator in redistricting. The "one-person/one-vote" decisions pushed state legislators to achieve population balance across districts. In turn, state legislative officials pushed the Census Bureau to recognize their voting precincts as tabulation areas. The bureau not only fulfilled this request but also created a computerized map of the nation-called Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing system (TIGER)-and broadened access to the decennial census redistricting data by making it available on CD-ROM with built-in access software. For Census 2000, legislatures will have the Internet as a new option for accessing these data.