The 'COUNT Act' Mandates Sharing Sensitive Data (Medicaid, Passports) to Track Citizenship for the 2030 Census

The proposed Citizen Only Updated National Tally Act, or the COUNT Act, is a massive data-sharing mandate aimed at figuring out the citizenship status of every single person in the United States. This isn’t just about the census—it’s about forcing nearly every major federal agency to open up their administrative files to the Department of Commerce (which runs the Census Bureau) to establish citizenship status for 100% of the population.

The All-Access Pass: Who’s Sharing What?

If you thought your data was siloed, think again. The bill requires federal agencies to provide Commerce with "whatever help they can legally provide" to count citizens and noncitizens. But it doesn't stop with vague requests. It mandates specific data sharing that hits close to home for millions of people. For instance, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must share data from the CMS Medicaid and CHIP Information System. The Social Security Administration (SSA) must share Master Beneficiary Records. The Department of State must hand over passport application data. DHS will share records on lawful permanent residents, asylum seekers, and even student visa holders.

In practical terms, this means records detailing who is receiving federal healthcare assistance (Medicaid/CHIP) or who is receiving Social Security benefits are now being linked and cross-referenced with immigration and citizenship data. The stated policy goal (Sec. 2) is to create a complete picture of immigration’s impact, but the mechanism is a massive data linkage project that connects your health records and benefits information to a federal citizenship tally.

The Citizenship Question Returns, and Privacy Protections Vanish

The bill takes two major steps that directly impact how the Census Bureau collects information. First, it mandates that the Secretary of Commerce start the process to add a citizenship question to the 2030 decennial census and expand its inclusion in other surveys like the American Community Survey (ACS). This is a big deal because the census count is used to determine political representation and how billions of dollars in federal funding are distributed for schools, roads, and hospitals.

Second, and perhaps most critically for data privacy, the COUNT Act terminates the Census Bureau’s current method for protecting individual data, known as the "differential privacy process" (Sec. 4). This technical method adds “noise” to aggregated data to prevent individuals from being identified. Six months after the bill passes, this protection is gone. The Census Director is then required to issue new, public instructions on how privacy will be protected. For those who care about their data anonymity, this creates a major gap: the existing safeguard is eliminated immediately, replaced only by a promise of future, unspecified guidance.

Real-World Fallout: Undercounts and State Pressure

So, what does this look like on the ground? For immigrant communities, both documented and undocumented, the mandatory inclusion of a citizenship question alongside the massive data-sharing mandate (linking health, benefits, and immigration records) could create a significant chilling effect. If people fear that participating in the census could lead to their or their family's sensitive data being used by immigration enforcement, they simply won't respond. This would lead to an inaccurate population count, potentially costing states and cities federal funding and political representation.

Furthermore, the bill pushes the Department of Commerce to step up efforts to access relevant records held by state governments. The Secretary must then report to Congress annually, listing any states that refuse to cooperate (Sec. 3). This creates federal pressure on states—which often hold highly sensitive records like birth certificates and driver’s license data—to comply with the federal data-gathering effort, potentially forcing states to choose between federal demands and their own privacy laws.