2020 Census Announces Completion of 99.98 of Addresses

WASHINGTON, D.C. ― In a New Year’s Eve announcement, Census Director Dr. Steve Dillingham announced that the country achieved a 99.98% completion of addresses. Census workers overcame attempts by President Donald Trump and his Republican allies to not count undocumented immigrants and refusing to allow an extension of the count the White House earlier supported.

In October, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to cut short the counting of every living American resident for the 2020 census by two weeks, despite warnings that doing so would result in inaccurate data with severe consequences for the next decade.

Lower courts had ordered the Trump administration to extend counting until Oct. 31. The decennial survey, used to draw electoral districts and allocate $1.5 trillion in federal funds, was originally scheduled to end Sept. 30, but the Trump administration originally sought a one month extension because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In late August, the commerce department, which oversees the Census Bureau, reversed its position, saying it would try and complete counting by Sept. 30 and deliver the data used to determine how many seats in Congress each state gets by the Dec. 31 statutory deadline. The reversal came even after the bureau’s own experts warned they could not meet those deadlines.

Dillingham credited the internet selfresponse tool that never went down once over the past year.