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 U.S. Census Bureau, Department of Commerce 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 cosponsors 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

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English, and there is no one else in the household 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 pandemic-related
challenges to fielding the 2020 Voting and Registration
Supplement, and ask potential voters about COVID-19's
effects.

The Census Bureau proposes to make the following changes to
the 2020 Voting and Registration questionnaire due to the
COVID pandemic:
a) Add a response choice to question S3 about
respondents' reasons for not registering to vote that
reference the COVID-19 pandemic.
b) Add a response choice to question S4 about
respondents’ reasons for not voting that reference the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Regarding Census fielding operations, the bureau has
employed 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

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guidance, the Census Bureau resumed limited in-person
interviews for the July CPS in selected states. The
above strategies will continue to be used for those areas
that are still telephone only.