entities. The Census Bureau delivered the data with census maps to all States by April 1, 1981. The Census Bureau produced the resultant election precinct tabulations as a special computer subfile and not, therefore, as part of the standard decennial data dissemination programs. As a result, the data were available only on computer listings and magnetic tape, not in any published report.
Immediately after releasing the 1980 P.L. 94-171 data to the States, the Census Bureau began evaluating the evolving needs of the redistricting officials to determine how best they could be addressed. In 1983, a Stakeholder’s Conference co-sponsored by the Census Bureau and the NCSL produced a set of recommendations for the 1990 Census Redistricting Data Program. These were to:
- Eliminate large census blocks and block groups that had noncontiguous pieces.
- Expand the criteria for acceptable census block boundary features to include such features as power lines, permanent fences, mountain ridges, pipelines, and firebreaks.
- Allow more street extensions, to break up large census blocks.
- Develop a suffix to identify each component of a block split by a governmental unit boundary in order to account for changes in governmental unit boundaries that would occur after the Census Bureau assigned its initial block designations for the 1990 census operations.
- Allow States to specify block boundary features for inclusion on the Census Bureau’s maps so that the block boundaries would correspond to voting district boundaries (in those States delineating voting districts based on census blocks).
- Issue the 1990 P.L. 94-171 criteria in early 1985.
- Provide nationwide census block coverage for 1990 data tabulations.
