By Ryan P. Haygood

The 2010 Census affords a unique opportunity to harness the momentum of African-American civic engagement that was forged in the 2008 Presidential election — this time, to ensure complete African-American inclusion.

Because the allocation of $400 billion dollars a year is at stake, an accurate 2010 Census is critical to African Americans and other communities of color. The equitable distribution of federal funds to state, county and municipal governments and the fair distribution of political power at every level of government depends on it.

Unfortunately, the 2000 Census failed to count 1 million people of color. More than 600,000 of them were African Americans — a number close to the total Black population of Tennessee. In contrast, non-Hispanic whites were over-counted by 2.2 million people, a number close to the total white population of Kansas.

The 2000 undercount cost communities across America an astonishing $4.1 billion in federal funds. The average loss in those communities was nearly $3,000 per person, further exacerbating socio-economic ills such as substandard education, health care, housing, and employment opportunities that are too often found in minority communities.

Regrettably, the African-American community again faces a serious undercount threat in the 2010 Census. African Americans have been disproportionately displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and victimized by the home foreclosure crisis. These vulnerable African Americans are at a heightened risk of being missed by the 2010 Census Takers.

To make matters worse, the Census Bureau counts incarcerated people as residents of the prisons in which they are housed, which are often rural communities, rather than in their permanent, pre-incarceration community, which is often in the inner-city.

Because Blacks make up a substantially disproportionate number of sentenced prisoners, this practice artificially inflates population numbers in the overwhelmingly white towns, villages and counties that house prisons, resulting in greater political influence for and distribution of economic resources to rural areas and a loss of resources to the inner-city communities. Given that the U.S. has over 2 million prisoners, this miscount has a tremendous distorting effect on the distribution of governmental resources and political power, rivaling that of the undercount itself.

Moreover, the Census Bureau’s current method of counting prisoners violates the basic principle of “one person, one vote.” For example, in the city of Anamosa, Iowa, a councilman from a prison community was elected to office from a ward which, according to the Census, had almost 1,400 residents — about the same as the other three wards in town. But 1,300 of these “residents” were actually prisoners in the Anamosa State Penitentiary. Once those prisoners were subtracted, the “ward” had fewer than 60 actual residents.

Anamosa, Iowa is not an anomaly. Census Bureau data shows that the African-American population of Brown County, Illinois more than doubled in ten years, to a total of 1,265 persons. Only 5 of these persons, however, were not prisoners brought in from other areas. In New York, seven state senatorial districts met minimum population size requirements only because they included large prisons in the population total, according to the Prison Policy Initiative report, Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in New York.

The obvious remedy is that the Census Bureau must change its practice of counting prisoners as residents of the prison communities where they are incarcerated. People housed in prisons should be counted as residents of the communities in which they lived prior to incarceration and to which they will return upon their release.

Although there is little chance of that common sense reform being adopted in time for the 2010 Census, the Census Bureau should collect data to adjust for the Census miscount. The Census Bureau has the unique ability to obtain and provide corrected data without the restrictions that limit access to home addresses for incarcerated populations. As a result, the Census Bureau is in the best position to correct its own practice of miscounting prisoners.

The Obama administration should make addressing this issue a priority. Too much is at stake not to.

Ryan P. Haygood is Co-Director of the Political Participation Group of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.