Response to Public Comment to the Federal Register

Comments in Response to the Federal Register
U.S. Department of Commerce
U.S. Census Bureau
Voting and Registration Supplement
OMB Control Number 0607-0466

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published a notice of our intent to ask the voting and registration questions in
the June 3, 2020, edition of the Federal Register (see 85 FR 34177, page 34177). We received one comment in response to
the notice, from which the NALEO Education Fund made several recommendations regarding the survey. Responses to the
recommendations are given below.
Recommendation
The Voting and Registration Supplement should supply
more high quality information about small populations by
increasing sample size or by incorporating targeted
oversampling.

Census Bureau Response
In order to increase the sample size for the the Voting and
Registration Supplement, Census and the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS) would have to increase the sample size for
the core survey, the Current Population Survey (CPS).
Census and BLS, the co-sponsors of the CPS, do not have the
funding to make these changes to the CPS sample.
In order to oversample for small populations for the the
Voting and Registration Supplement, Census and BLS would
have to oversample for small populations. Census and BLS,
the co-sponsors of the CPS, do not have the funding to make
these changes to the CPS sample.

The Voting and Registration Supplement should be
conducted in languages other than English.

The Census Bureau does not have the funding needed to
translate all CPS supplements into multiple languages.
Census does hire interviewers with language skills other than
English. If an interviewer encounters a respondent who does
not speak English, and there is no one else in the household

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who can translate for the respondent, the case can be
reassigned to an interviewer who does speak the language.
The Census Bureau must anticipate unique pandemicrelated challenges to fielding the 2020 Voting and
Registration Supplement, and ask potential voters about
COVID-19's effects.

The Census Bureau will consider the recommendations for
changes to the 2020 Voting questions due to the COVID
pandemic, specifically to add response choices to question
S4 about respondents' reasons for not voting that reference
the COVID-19 pandemic.
Regarding Census fielding operations, the bureau has been
employing the following strategies since personal visit
interviews were halted on March 20, 2020:
a) Attempting to contact all sample households by
telephone. For sample units in the first interview,
Census is providing interviewers telephone numbers
from the internal Census Contact Frame and from
third party sources.
b) Sending all households that do not have a good
telephone number or who do not answer Census calls
a "Please Call Me Letter". This letter provides the
name and number of the interviewer assigned to the
case, and asks the respondent to call the interviewer to
set up an appointment to do the interview by
telephone.
c) Based on current local area conditions and federal
guidance, the Census Bureau resumed limited inperson interviews for the July CPS
in selected states. The above strategies will continue to
be used for those areas that are still telephone only.

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