The Census Bureau’s efforts to achieve this goal began in 1973 with the establishment of a close working relationship with the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) and its Reapportionment Task Force. The Census Bureau worked with this group to identify the specific weaknesses in the 1970 census data for use in legislative redistricting, and to minimize these weaknesses for 1980. In 1974, the NCSL conducted a mail survey of State legislative officials and legislative staff throughout the Nation to better define the existing problems and elicit recommendations for improvements. The Census Bureau also held discussions with the International City Management Association, the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the National Association of Counties about ways to obtain similar information from members of these organizations. During 1974 and 1975, over 70 communities across the Nation organized a series of public hearings on the upcoming decennial census; as a result of these meetings, the Census Bureau was able to obtain additional suggestions for improving its redistricting data products and associated geographic criteria.
The surveys and discussions resulted in focusing attention on three major recommendations: (1) the early release of data, (2) the geographic compatibility of census tabulation units with voting districts, and (3) the need for block-by-block population counts for incorporated places. For many States, the final census data often arrived too late to be of any use to them. In other States, the timing of data publication may have been acceptable, but the size and boundaries of some of the tabulation units, specifically EDs, were not. Because census tabulation units were not directly compatible with local voting districts, State authorities involved in redistricting could only approximate the population and characteristics of the areas they were delineating. Many users who had been frustrated with the 1970 data and data products felt that data for the smallest possible census geographic unit, the census block, should be available for more areas so that State and local governments could make more acceptable delineations.
In the fall of 1975, the Census Bureau agreed to develop and implement a program aimed at improving the geographic and data products from
