• A census first: Black voter turnout passes whites

    Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

    William Barney, 27, holds his ballot after voting in the US presidential election at the polling place of Star Mazda car dealership on Tuesday, Nov. 6, in Glendale, Calif.

    By Hope Yen, The Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — Making history, America's blacks voted at higher rates than whites in 2012, lifting Democrat Barack Obama to victory amid voter apathy, particularly among young people, new census data show. Despite increasing population, the number of white voters declined for the first time since 1996.

    Blacks were the only race or ethnic group to show an increase in voter turnout in November, most notably in the Midwest and Southeastern U.S., the Census Bureau said Wednesday. The analysis, based on a sample survey of voters last year, is viewed as the best source of government data on turnout by race and ethnicity.

    The Associated Press reported last week that black voter turnout surpassed whites for the first time, based on an analysis by experts of earlier data.

    In all, about 66.2 percent of eligible black voters cast ballots in 2012, up from 64.7 percent in 2008, according to census data. That compares with non-Hispanic white turnout of 64.1 percent, which fell from 66.1 percent four years earlier. As recently as 1996, blacks had turnout rates 8 percentage points lower than non-Hispanic whites.

    Latino turnout dipped slightly, from 49.9 percent in 2008 to 48 percent, while Asian-American turnout was basically unchanged at 47 percent.

    Voter turnout across all race and ethnic groups fell for a second consecutive presidential election, from 64 percent in 2004 to 62 percent in November, according to the census figures.

    "Obama's win in 2012, despite the important Democratic constituency of young voters not participating at a high level, is good news," said Michael McDonald, a George Mason University professor who specializes in voter turnout. "The bad news is that voting is a habit — and the fact that we saw turnout declines among younger African-Americans suggests Democrats will have to work even harder to excite these voters in future elections."

    The data underscore how turnout plays an important role in elections for both whites and blacks, who will remain the two largest racial groups of eligible voters for the next decade. While Hispanics are now the fast-growing demographic group, they currently make up a smaller share of eligible voters because many are children and non-citizens, limiting their electoral impact for the immediate future.

    In 2012, the number of blacks who voted rose by 1.7 million. Hispanics added 1.4 million and Asian voters increased by 550,000.

    Meanwhile, even though the white population is slowly increasing, the number of white voters dropped by 2 million — the first drop in absolute terms for any race or ethnic group since 1996.


    By age, youth enthusiasm for voting fizzled in 2012.

    About 41 percent of voters age 18-24 cast ballots in November, down 7 percentage points from 2008. The drop was greatest among whites, whose turnout fell from 49 percent to 42 percent. But young black voters also saw big declines, from 55 percent in 2008 to 49 percent. That's compared with a decline among young Hispanics from 39 percent to 34 percent.

    The only subgroups showing increases in voter turnout were among blacks ages 45 to 64 as well as those 65 and older.

    "Blacks have been voting at higher rates, and the Hispanic and Asian populations are growing rapidly, yielding a more diverse electorate," said Thom File, a census sociologist who wrote the voting analysis. "Over the last five presidential elections, the share of voters who were racial or ethnic minorities rose from just over 1 in 6 in 1996 to more than 1 in 4 in 2012."

    "We do know the population is growing more diverse, and the electorate is growing more diverse in a different way," File added.

    Other census findings:

    • White turnout declined in 39 states from 2008 to 2012, including presidential battleground states such as Ohio, Virginia and Florida.
    • The gender gap in voting persists, a trend since 1996. About 64 percent of women voted, compared with 60 percent of men.
    • Declines in voter turnout also were seen most notably among single people, the unemployed, renters and those with only a high school education or some college, suggesting in part voter disenchantment amid a sluggish economy.
    • Black voter turnout surpassed that of whites mostly in the Midwest region, which covers Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as the Southern U.S. region including Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

    Demographers say the numbers pose long-term challenges for Republicans, given that 80 percent of nonwhites voted for Obama in November.

    Analyses by Brookings Institution demographer William H. Frey show that Republican Mitt Romney would have barely won the presidency if whites and other race groups had turned out at the same rates as they did in 2004, when black turnout was below its current historic levels. But if Democrats can replicate 2012 turnout rates in 2016, they would win the presidency, given current population trends, Frey said.

    Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the Pew Research Center, indicated the economy will be an important factor in future elections, noting that Hispanics and young people were among the hardest hit during the high unemployment years of 2008-2012.

    "Given what we know about the youth bulge in the population, Millennials and Hispanics will become ever more important voting blocs in upcoming presidential elections," Taylor said. "But in 2012, both groups left a lot of votes on the table."

    The census figures are based on the Current Population Survey as of November 2012. Since Hispanic is defined by the government as an ethnicity and not a race, census figures for "blacks" and "Asians" may include Hispanics. Census data for "white" refer to whites who are not of Hispanic ethnicity.

    © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Census Bureau: 2010 population count was pretty accurate

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    Census officials say the overall 2010 population count was well-executed.

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    The U.S. Census Bureau is getting better at counting the number of people living in the United States, though it’s still disproportionately overlooking some minorities.


    A review of the accuracy of the 2010 census found that it overcounted the total U.S. population by 0.01 percent, or about 36,000 people. That compares to a census overcount of 0.49 percent in 2000 and an undercount of 1.61 percent in 1990.

    “On this one evaluation — the net undercount of the total population — this was an outstanding census,” Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said in a press release.

    The post-enumeration survey measured the coverage of the nation’s household population (excluding the 8 million people in “group quarters,” such as nursing homes or college dorms). It surveyed a sample of the 300.7 million people living in housing units and then matched the responses to the census, resulting in estimates of error.

    Census officials said renters were slightly undercounted and homeowners slightly overcounted in the 2010 census.

    The 2010 count missed about 2.1 percent of black Americans and 1.5 percent of Hispanics. That's statistically comparable to levels in 2000. The non-Hispanic white population was slightly overcounted.

    “While the overall coverage of the census was exemplary, the traditional hard-to-count groups, like renters, were counted less well,” Groves said. “Because ethnic and racial minorities disproportionately live in hard-to-count circumstances, they too were undercounted relative to the majority population.”

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    The accuracy of the count is a big improvement from 1940, when the black undercount was estimated at a whopping 8.4 percent, according to an Associated Press review of records recently released online. That means more than a million blacks weren’t accounted for in 1940, an undercount that had ramifications at the time on the political map and the distribution of resources, according to the AP.

    The total population of the U.S. was counted as 308,745,538 in 2010, a 9.7 percent increase from the 2000 count.

    As required by the Constitution, the census has been conducted every 10 years since 1790. The population count is used to allocate House seats and federal money for roads, schools and social programs.

    The Associated Press and msnbc.com's James Eng contributed to this report.

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  • Virginia Tech seeks to block fine in shooting case

    Steve Helber / AP

    Suzanne Grimes holds up a picture of her injured son, Virginia Tech shooting victim Kevin Sterne, during a 2008 Senate Courts of Justice committee hearing on a bill to close the gun show loophole at the Capitol in Richmond, Va.

    By Kimberly Hefling , The Associated Press

    Virginia Tech says it acted appropriately in alerting the campus that bloody spring day in 2007 during what turned out to be the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

    The government disagrees and has levied $55,000 in fines, contending the school was too slow in notifying students, faculty and staff and therefore in violation of a federal law requiring timely warnings when there are safety threats.

    The university gets a chance Wednesday to begin making its case before an Education Department administrative judge, Ernest C. Canellos, in hopes of erasing a fine that isn't hefty but can leave a black mark on an institution's record.

    The fines were levied under a law known as the Clery Act, which requires colleges and universities to provide warnings in a timely manner and to report the number of crimes on campus. During the Obama administration, there's been a ramping up in enforcement under the act, which has gotten recent attention because of scandals at Penn State and Syracuse.

    Investigators have been on the Penn State campus for a Clery Act investigation into whether the university failed to report incidents of sexual abuse in connection to allegations against former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. An Education Department spokesman said the department is also reviewing whether a similar investigation will take place at Syracuse. Three men, including two former ballboys, have accused former assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine of molesting them as minors.

    In the Virginia Tech case, the rare hearing is expected to last two or three days. It probably won't end with an immediate ruling and further legal challenges could follow. Virginia Tech hasn't indicated it is backing down even though experts say schools found in violation of the law typically accept a fine and agree to changes or negotiate a settlement.

    This has attracted great interest in higher education circles, given the high profile nature of the crime and the chance to learn how the department applies the law. The 1990 law was named after Lehigh University student Jeanne Clery, who was raped and murdered in her dorm room by another student in 1986.

    During this administration, the Education Department has conducted more random Clery Act audits and has worked at times with the FBI. Six schools this year alone are facing fines, which is the same number that paid fines in the first 18 years of the law, said S. Daniel Carter, director of public policy at Security on Campus Inc., a Wayne, Pa.,-based organization formed by Clery's parents.

    The maximum fine per violation under the law is $27,500. Colleges and universities can also lose the right to offer federal student loans, but that's never happened. In the highest fine issued under the Clery Act, Eastern Michigan University agreed in 2008 to pay $350,000 for covering up the rape and killing of a student in her dorm room by telling reporters and her parents there were no signs of foul play.

    'Case is about responsibility'
    In the Virginia Tech case, the university opted to exercise its right for an appeals hearing before an Education Department administrative judge. Larry Hincker, a university spokesman, said in an email that the actions taken by Virginia Tech were well within the practices in effect then on campuses.

    Virginia's attorney general, Kenneth Cuccinelli, said in a statement earlier this year that the appeal was filed to compel the department to treat Virginia Tech fairly. The university contends the department is holding it to a higher standard than what was in place at the time of the shootings.

    "There are important principles and policies at stake here that affect not just Virginia Tech, but colleges and universities all across the country," Cuccinelli said in the statement.

    The university is facing charges of failure to issue a timely warning and failure to follow its own procedures for providing notification.

    "This case is about responsibility," the Education Department said in a court filing. "Specifically, it's about an institution's responsibility to provide vital information to its students and employees as required by federal law."

    The department said the university violated the law by waiting more than two hours after two students were shot to death in a residence hall before sending out a campus wide warning by email. The department said the email was too vague because it mentioned only a "shooting incident" but did not say anyone had died. By that time, student gunman Seung-Hui Cho was chaining shut the doors to a classroom building where he killed 30 more people and then himself.

    At the time the email was sent, the university has argued it was believed the two students were shot in an isolated domestic incident and that the shooter had left the campus. The school also contends it had planned a news conference to discuss the residence hall shootings until the later shootings intervened.

    "This case is not one in which Virginia Tech was avoiding its responsibilities, but rather one in which it responded in a variety of ways that are permissible under the applicable regulations," the university said in a court filing.

    'A life of grief'
    Some family members of the students killed have called the fines woefully inadequate. Suzanne Grimes, whose son Kevin Sterne, was injured in the shootings, is scheduled to testify. She said in a telephone interview that university officials failed in their duty to warn students.

    "The families of the deceased have a lifetime of grief and the survivors like my son, Kevin, have a lifetime of injuries and what the future holds for them, as a mother I'm concerned about," Grimes said.

    Peter Lake, an education law professor at Stetson University College of Law, said higher education officials believe that what happened at Virginia Tech could happen on any campus. At the same time, university administrators are aware that enforcement of the Clery Act has increased, he said.

    "It will be very interesting to see what the arguments are and how they are perceived," Lake said. "I think the field is very much on high alert. They are trying to figure out what's happening next."

    While the Virginia Tech hearing may prove instructive for other schools on the Clery Act, a more applicable example on how such cases work involved a review at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas, Carter said.

    The Virginia Tech case focuses on what happened related to a specific incident, while Tarleton State's covered broader issues, which is more typical, Carter said.

    The Education Department fined Tarleton State $137,500 in 2009 for allegedly underreporting the number of sexual assaults, burglaries and drug-related crimes on and near the campus between 2002 and 2007. The university appealed.

    There wasn't an evidentiary hearing, but after reviewing the evidence, Canellos reduced the fine to $27,500. The case was appealed to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who has not issued a decision.

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