In 2017, a government watchdog agency placed the 2020 census on its “high risk” list – sounding the alarm to the public and lawmakers that the vital decade count stood for near insurmountable odds.
The first company to print the forms went bankrupt. There was weak cybersecurity when the census first moved online, hires were hired, cuts to crucial operational tests, and the Trump administration’s failed attempt to add a civilian question disrupted the all-important census.
Now, as a global coronavirus pandemic expands the U.S. economy and daily life, the census faces a logistical nightmare to prevent what experts say could be a 10-year error that upsets the balance of power in the U.S. next years sketched.
On Monday, the Census Bureau announced that it would end its counting a month early, on Sept. 30. The movement created astonishment among researchers, demographers, civil rights organizations, local community leaders and immigrant rights groups.
“Even under the best of circumstances, the census is an enormously challenging and very, very difficult operation,” said Chris Mihm, the director of strategic issues at the Government Accountability Office, a watchdog agency. “If you apply late design changes there, it just becomes exponentially riskier.”
“And it’s once in a decade,” he added. “There are no do-overs.”
Steven Dillingham, the director of the Census Bureau, said in a statement on the bureau’s website that the bureau will end all its accounting efforts by Sept. 30, which means that all summers who knock-knock to collect responses from people who have not already -responsed online, by mail or phone will then stop their efforts. He said the options for self-response will close on this date, while providing guarantees that the agency will strive for accuracy.
Meanwhile, about 63 percent of households responded, according to the Census Bureau. There are still 58 million households to be counted, and the agency now has about seven weeks to count them all.
Many of them live in hard-to-reach areas of the country, such as rural areas and communities with limited internet access. Also disproportionately affected are Naturist tribes, the rapidly growing Latin population, Asian Americans, and Black Americans, all of whom are historically understaffed compared to the white population.
“Can it be done? Sure, it can be done,” Mihm said. “But it will just be very difficult for them to do that and achieve the goals of historical accuracy that they want.”
If not, he said, there could be a situation in which there is an even greater superiority of white Americans, while non-white communities are drastically too poor, and then we distort what he calls our “national snapshot. called.
The census is used to determine the number of seats in the Second Chamber allocated to each state and to redraw congressional districts. It also affects the distribution of billions of dollars in federal aid.
Currently, local leaders and governments in the country are stepping up efforts to ensure that communities do not divide the $ 1.5 trillion over the next decade. The money supports hospitals, schools, public transportation and small businesses, among other areas – many of the key drivers of daily life and the economy turned over by COVID-19.
Local governments and community groups are attacking people to remind them what is going on.
Nearly two dozen states have invested millions in federal efforts. Out of fear of losing political power, California has thrown nearly $ 200 million into outreach; Illinois allocated $ 30.5 million; New York, $ 20 million; and Washington State, $ 15 million, according to the National Conference of State Legislators. Other states have each earmarked less than $ 10 million for the effort.
“We will go to the mats to count every New Yorker despite the challenges that the Trump administration continues to put in our way,” said Julie Menin, the census director of New York City.
The news from the Census Bureau cuts one month also comes after President Donald Trump signed a memo in July aimed at unlocking undocumented immigrants living in the country included in the census to decide how many members of Congress to each be divided state.
New York City and other state and local governments have filed a lawsuit against the administration, calling it unconstitutional.
“This is really a nasty ploy to have cities that have large immigrant communities, to lose representation from Congress and that representation has moved to red Republican areas,” Menin said. “That’s where this whole battle goes.”
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the CEO of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said her organization has worked directly to emphasize the importance of the census and sees the memo and cuts the deadline as the last wrenches the administration in the process has smashed.
“Make no mistake, this is not just an evil and undemocratic move ahead of an election,” she said. “Its impact is real and will be felt for decades to come by communities that have been marginalized since the days of the nation.”
“Immigrants are people and should be given the opportunity to count,” she added. “We can not go back to the time in our country where people were not counted as complete people.”
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the agency closes operations from March to early June. The agency called for two-part action this past spring to extend its December 31 mandate for submitting apartment data to the president by four months until April 30, 2021, and to return data to the states by July 31, 2021, instead of March 31, 2021. However, the legislation has been halted.
On August 4, four former directors of the Census Bureau, who served both Democratic and Republican presidents, raised the alarm, warning that reducing the deadline “would result in seriously incomplete enumerations in many areas of our country. “
Roughly 900 national and community organizations also sent a letter to the leaders of the House of Representatives on August 6, urging them to add provisions to the next coronavirus bill that would block the census’ e greve.
“If remaining counting operations are not done properly, communities that need the most resources to improve liveability and living standards will get the short end of the stick for the next decade,” she wrote.
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Rep. Carolyn Maloney, DN.Y., chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee, in May introduced the Fair and Accurate Census Act, which would extend the deadline and provide the agency with more resources. She said the measure would likely pass the Democratic-controlled House, but is unlikely to get a vote in the GOP-controlled Senate.
The Heroes Act, a massive coronavirus relief package that passed the House last May, also included similar language to extend the census deadline and increase the agency’s budget.
Maloney, however, said she sees this fight to extend the legal deadline and defeat the president’s memo that is also taking place in the courts because the census is “part of our democracy.”
“We need to get to the Supreme Court,” she said. “People say we can not do it fast enough – I can not accept that. We have to do it. We have to get it to the Supreme Court and through the entire judiciary extremely quickly, because so much depends on it.”
