The census ended last week after the Supreme Court sided with
President Donald Trump's administration and suspended a lower court
order allowing the head count to continue through Oct. 31.
The
U.S. Census Bureau says that overall, it reached more than 99.9% of the
nation’s households, but in a nation of 330 million people, the
remaining .1% represents hundreds of thousands of uncounted residents.
And in small cities, even handfuls of undercounted residents can make a
big difference in the resources the communities receive and the power
they wield.
Also, a high percentage of households reached does not
necessarily translate to an accurate count: The data’s quality depends
on how it was obtained. The most accurate information comes from people
who “self-respond” to the census questionnaire online, by phone or mail.
Census officials say 67% of the people counted in the 2020 census
responded that way.
In any case, census takers, who go door to door, fell short of the 99.9% benchmark in many pockets of the country.
In large parts of Louisiana, which was battered by two hurricanes,
census takers didn’t even hit 94% of the households they needed to
reach. In Window Rock, the capital of the Navajo Nation on the
Arizona-New Mexico border that was ravaged by COVID-19, census takers
only reached 98.9%.
Other parts of the U.S. where the count fell
short of 99.9% include Quincy, Massachusetts; New Haven, Connecticut;
Asheville, North Carolina; Jackson, Mississippi; Providence, Rhode
Island, and Manhattan, where neighborhoods emptied out in the spring
because of the corona virus.
Rhode Island is one of about 10 states
projected to lose a congressional seat, based on anticipated state
population figures in the 2020 census. It could take as few as 30,000
overlooked people for the nation’s physically smallest state to revert
back to having a single House district, said John Marion, executive
director of Common Cause Rhode Island, a nonprofit watchdog.
The
early conclusion of the census "is really going to stymie our efforts,
not only to maintain that second district but also to have fair
representation in our state legislature,” Marion said.
Jackson,
Mississippi, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba blamed the coronavirus, which
curtailed in-person outreach efforts that could have made a difference
in hard-to-count neighborhoods. The mayor isn't sure having an extra two
weeks would have made a huge difference, but he says not having a
complete count is significant: Jackson loses $1,000 each year for every
person not counted.
“All of this has long-term implications for city planning,
for how we address our needs, and for ensuring that we are fairly
represented in the state house and in Congress," Lumumba said.
There
are also concerns about the quality of the data obtained. The
second-most accurate information after self-responses comes from
household members being interviewed by census takers. When census takers
can't reach someone at home, they turn to less-accurate information
from neighbors, landlords and administrative records, the latter of
which have been in widespread use for the first time this year.
Information was obtained by these methods for almost 40% of the census
takers' caseload, according to the Census Bureau.
“Do not be
fooled by the Census Bureau’s 99% myth. If there was ever fake news,
this is it,” said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban
League, one of the civil rights groups that challenged the Trump
administration’s census schedule in court.
Census Bureau director
Steven Dillingham said Monday that a first look at the data collection
operation indicates “an extremely successful execution.” He noted that
the 67% self-response rate this year was higher than the 66.5% reached
during the 2010 census.
How much time the Census Bureau has to
crunch the numbers is still being fought in courts and in Congress.
Civil rights groups and others are pushing Congress to extend the
bureau's deadline for turning in apportionment numbers for congressional
seats from Dec. 31 to the end of next April.
The Trump
administration said the Census Bureau needed to end the count early to
meet the Dec. 31 deadline. But top officials at the Census Bureau said
as recently as July that it would still be impossible to process all of
the data by the end of the year. They've since changed their tune, and
on Wednesday said in a conference call with the news media that the
deadline can be met by working around the clock and with technological advances in computer processing.
In
areas that were not counted, Census Bureau officials said they will use
a statistical technique called imputation, which uses the
characteristics and size of neighboring households to fill in the gaps
of homes with missing data.
Groups suing the administration over
the timetables said the deadline for turning in apportionment numbers
was moved up to accommodate an order from Trump to exclude people in the
U.S. illegally from the numbers used to divvy up congressional seats
among the states. Sticking to a Dec. 31 deadline ensures that data
processing remains under the administration's control, regardless of who
wins the presidential election.
A panel of federal judges in New York ruled that Trump's order was unlawful, but the administration has appealed to the Supreme Court. A second panel of federal judges in California on Thursday ruled that the order was also unconstitutional.
“This census isn’t over,” Morial said. “We will continue to fight in the courts, Congress and the court of public opinion.”
From AOL.Com
