Yesterday, the Commerce Department, in charge of the 2020 Census cried uncle.
Yes, after a Supreme Court decision that didn’t go their way and staring down a big deadline to start printing questionnaires, the Trump administration decided to give up chasing the citizenship question on the census. Hooray!
This is such a big win. The importance of properly counting every person currently living in the United States cannot be overstated. How many people are living in which states directly translates to massive amounts of federal dollars to serve those populations. And determines how many Representatives are assigned to each state for the House of Representatives.
We can all thank the ACLU for suing the government, and prevailing in the case. You can make a donation to thank them HERE.
An action you can take
With the citizenship question behind us, we now need to look straight on at the census’ big challenge. Making sure that everyone, absolutely everyone, currently living in our country gets counted. You want everyone living in your state and your district to be counted. Why? Because the total population translates into real federal dollars and services that flow to your state.
So, what can you do. Google “2020 Census” and your state. When I did the search, I found my state’s dedicated page for the Census, the name and roster of the committee charged with overseeing that the census is taken properly in our state, the contact information for the census lead, and helpful resources including one about “hard to count” populations.
Educate yourself on how your state is conducting the 2020 Census. As the date of the census approaches, be sure to spread the news about when the census will be hitting households and encouraging your family, friends, and colleagues to return their questionnaire. Every dollar your state spends trying to get people to return their questionnaire is a dollar they can’t use to track down the “hard to count” people.
So, in summary, yes you can breathe a sigh of relief that the citizenship question is off the 2020 Census. But there are still ways for you to stay in the know and help the 2020 Census conduct the very best count possible.
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Yes, this is very good news; however, we’re not out of the woods yet. The Commerce Department has implemented new technology to record and store the census data – ostensibly to cut costs – but an audit has already discovered glaring security problems in the technology which could allow nefarious interests to corrupt or destroy the data. Gee, I wonder who those nefarious interests might be!
NO idea. (Yes, that was me being sarcastic.)