Activist Lauri Dawn Kindness, right, speaks at the Crow Indian Reservation, Lodge Grass, at the Mount on Wednesday, August 26, 2020, as Lodge Grass Mayor Quincy Dabney, the ‘records for a social media campaign to increase Native American participation in the US Census Kindness and other Western Native Voice activists are trying to avoid tribal undercount that could result in decreased federal funding (AP Photo / Matthew Brown)
Census advocates across the country made last-minute efforts on Thursday to get as many households to respond to the 2020 census, which has been challenged by a pandemic, natural disasters, fighting in the courts and the Trump administration’s efforts to end a month earlier than expected
The count was scheduled to stop at 11:59 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time on Thursday – 5:59 a.m. Friday for people living on the East Coast – but questions persisted over timelines and who is counted when seats in Congress are awarded
Advocates are particularly concerned that minorities and those living in rural and tribal areas are not being respected due to the hasty end to the count, resulting in reduced federal funding for these communities and possibly less Congress seats and electoral votes for states with large minority populations
Census advocates who planned two more weeks to encourage people to take the census found themselves in trouble after the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration could end the counting of the country this week
« Everyone is bending down to try to reach as many people as possible, » said Kathay Feng, an official with Common Cause, the advocacy group for good government
In Rhode Island, advocates took to bus hubs in Providence to make sure people filled out forms that asked about the makeup of their household Armies of tablets to help residents answer in the online questionnaire, teams of defenders from New York went to prospect in the neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens In Detroit, residents had the chance to win $ 25 gift cards in exchange for going to a church parking lot to fill out their census forms
In Los Angeles, Esperanza Guevara, census campaign manager for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, led telephone banking efforts to encourage people to fill out the census form
The census is used to determine how $ 1.5 trillion in federal spending is distributed each year, as well as the number of congressional seats each state obtains in a process called allocation
Tens of thousands of temporary enumerators had been hired by the US Census Bureau to knock on the doors of homes whose residents did not fill out their census forms on Thursday, many responding to employee exit surveys and handed over the mobile devices they had used during the canvassing
After the Supreme Court ruling, the Census Bureau said it would continue to collect data until Thursday, but stopped some operations on the spot without taking advantage of the extra two days, some enumerators say In Arkansas, an operation to send people to hard-to-count neighborhoods was suspended two days before the end of the count
Thursday’s deadline came after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration, which argued that the census must end immediately so that the Census Bureau has sufficient time to process the data in order to respond to a mandate from Congress in December 31 Deadline for transmission of dispatch numbers Associate Judge Sonia Sotomayor dissented, saying minorities and others “will disproportionately bear the burden of any inaccuracies »
By sticking to Dec 31, the Trump administration would end up controlling the numbers used for the breakdown, regardless of who wins next month’s presidential election Opponents fear the administration is deviating from past practice and leaves out people who are in the US illegally – Trump ordered the Census Bureau to do just that for the pay-as-you-go count, but this is currently being challenged in the courts The Trump administration had previously attempted to obtain a question on citizenship on the 2020 census questionnaire, but was blocked by the Supreme Court last year
Supporters still hope Congress passes legislation that extends the allocation deadline from December 31 to the end of next April in order to give the Census Bureau enough time to verify data quality, remove duplicates, and fill in missing information with administrative records
Originally, the Census Bureau allocated five months for the data processing phase, but this period shrinks to less than three months if the statistical agency tries to meet the 31st deadline. Census data users are worried about the lack of time, and even some of the top Census Bureau officials said this summer that it would be impossible to meet the Dec 31 deadline.They then revised their statements to say it could be done if the count had stopped at the beginning of the month
It also remains unanswered whether the Census Bureau will be able to come up with a methodology to determine who is illegally in the country in order to implement Trump’s directive, which a panel of federal judges in New York City ruled illegal Trump administration appealed to Supreme Court
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