Everyone counts
Census deadline extended by judge, Mother Lode census workers still counting
The nation’s once-a-decade effort to count everyone in the entire United States was scheduled to stop collecting data by Sept. 30, but a federal judge in San Jose ruled Thursday evening to extend counting the nation’s population until Oct. 31.
The federal Department of Justice is expected to appeal the decision, but in the meantime census workers and census advocates in the Central Sierra Nevada are urging residents of Tuolumne and Calaveras counties to make sure they get counted.
“With the judge’s ruling, as long as it holds, it will mean the census workers who were only recently deployed in Tuolumne County will be given as much time as in every past census to complete their jobs effectively,” said Kristy Moore, communications manager for Amador-tuolumne Community Action Agency, which has subcontracted with Tuolumne County for census outreach with funds provided by the state of California.
Part of the outreach includes the website Tuolumne County Counts at www.tccounts.org.
“We are considered a hard-to-count community due to our geographic nature and our lack of broadband,” Moore said Friday morning. “The groups that sued the Census Bureau stated the shortened schedule would undercount residents in communities such as ours. This is fantastic news for Tuolumne County as an accurate count is critical and will shape us for the next 10 years.”
Census workers: ‘Don’t wait’
Organizers and communications staff for the Census Bureau in the Mother Lode and Sacramento say the 2020 count is just as vital as it’s always been.
The count happens once every 10 years, and census data helps determine how hundreds of billions of dollars are allocated by the federal government every year. It also ensures accurate distribution of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives among states based on their latest populations.
Marna Davis, a Sacramento-based spokeswoman for the U.S. Census Bureau, urged Mother Lode residents to get counted now — no matter what unfolds in federal courts on the deadline for census workers to stop counting.
“The judge’s decision doesn’t change the fact that if you haven’t responded to the census, now is the time, regardless of what’s happening in the courts,” Davis said Friday morning. “You can’t anticipate what will happen. As far as the public is concerned, if you haven’t responded to the census, please respond now.”
To count as many people and households in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties as possible before the now on-hold Sept. 30 deadline, 2020 Census workers are planning events in Twain Harte, Groveland, and Angels Camp this weekend and early next week. Census workers are calling them mobile questionnaire assistance centers, with census workers present with tablets to help people get counted on the spot.
They planned to be at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, 820 South Main St. in Angels Camp, from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Friday, in addition to Twain Harte Market, 18711 Tiffeni Drive, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday; Groveland Mar-val Market, 19000 Main St., 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday; at Twain Harte Market again 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday;
Calaveras Lumber, 155 S. Main St., Angels Camp, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday; and Groveland Mar-val Market again, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday.
Self-response rates in the Lode
People can still selfrespond for the 2020 Census online, by phone, by mail, or in person with a census worker.
As of Friday, 66.2 percent of households in Sonora had self-responded, and 55 percent of Tuolumne County households had responded. In Angels Camp. the self-response rate was 57.1 percent and for Calaveras County it was 50.1 percent.
Self-response rates for Tuolumne and Calaveras counties so far this year are higher than in 2010, when 48.2 percent of Tuolumne County households self-responded, and 45.2 percent of Calaveras households self-responded.
Self-response rates in the Mother Lode and elsewhere in the U.S. do not include the leg work thousands of census workers have done since mid-july. For example, 68.8 percent of California households have self-responded for the 2020 Census, and 29.2 percent of households have been counted in followup work, so that as of Friday, 97.9 percent of all California households had been counted.
Granular response data like that is not available for Mother Lode communities. Non-response followup counts and total counts for individual towns and counties were not available nationwide.
More outreach
Regardless of how many Tuolumne and Calaveras county residents remain uncounted, Mother Lode census advocates like Kathy Gallino, economic and community development director for Calaveras County, said she is not stopping until the count is finished.
“My personal goal for the 2020 census was to be 51 percent or higher, so with one more week to go we’re doing more outreach,” Gallino said Thursday afternoon, before U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in the Northern District of California issued a preliminary injunction requiring the Census Bureau to keep trying to count the nation’s residents through Oct. 31.
“We have tablets set up at libraries in San Andreas, Mokelumne Hill and Arnold,” Gallino said Thursday. “Tonight we’re going to be at the Farmers Market in San Andreas.
“I’m always trying to help on this,” Gallino said. “I won’t quit until it’s finished. I want it to be accurate and thorough, and I want to do better than we did in 2010. We missed out on federal funding because the 2010 census in Calaveras was less than complete. If only 45 percent of the population responded, that’s not enough. The fact we’re at 50 percent now, that’s encouraging. It’s an improvement over the last time. On top of everything we’ve had COVID in the middle of this, so I’m not going to give up until the last day, the last minute.”
In an email on Friday, Gallino said the judge’s ruling was good news and that Calaveras County will be continuing its census outreach and enumerating until Oct. 31.
Tuolumne and Calaveras counties are among a group of counties with census administrators based at the Stockton Area Census Office, where as of Thursday the percentage of non-response followup workload completed was estimated to be 88.8 percent.
“Census takers are following up with non-responding households,” Davis said Thursday. “We will make up to six attempts to count the number of people in a given household. We ask the public to please cooperate.”
Davis reiterated that the census only happens once every 10 years. The population counts and statistics are used to determine how much federal funding the Mother Lode will receive for critical services and facilities, including roads, bridges, schools, school lunch programs, homeless services, senior services, hospitals and emergency response funding.
“That’s why everybody needs to be counted,” Davis said. “Tuolumne and Calaveras deserve their fair share of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding each year.”
Never mind the politics
Scholars, lawyers and many elected leaders say counting the nation’s population is historically one of the federal government’s most straightforward constitutional assignments. But now, some census advocates say, the 2020 Census has devolved into a partisan tug-of-war that threatens a complete and accurate count.
Last year, the Trump administration tried to add a citizenship question to the census to try to decrease minority responses, particularly among immigrants, and give Republicans an advantage in redistricting. Federal courts permanently blocked the question from being included.
In March, Media Matters for America, a politically left-leaning nonprofit organization that monitors right-leaning U.S. media, found right-wing Facebook pages and groups were spreading disinformation about the census.
Backlash in Congress prompted Facebook to remove ads containing disinformation about the census that were sponsored by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee. Other Facebook pages and groups continued spreading disinformation and fear mongering that could interfere with the census count, affecting congressional representation and federal funding for the next decade.
The preliminary injunction issued Thursday by Koh in San Jose requires the Census Bureau to keep trying to count the nation’s residents through Oct. 31. Koh found the Trump administration’s curtailed census schedule is likely to produce inaccurate numbers for historically undercounted groups, including people of color and immigrants.
Earlier this year, in response to delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration called for more time for the once-a-decade census and asked Congress to pass four-month extensions to legal deadlines for reporting results.
The administration changed its position in July, when Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the bureau, told census administrators to speed up counting efforts and conclude by Sept. 30
– a month earlier than the bureau had planned – in order to deliver results to President Donald Trump by the end of this year.
California, with 39.5 million to 40 million residents, is the most populous U.S. state and currently has 53 congressional districts with 53 leaders elected to the House of Representatives. The estimated cost of the 2020 census is $15.6 billion to count every single person living in the U.S. and its five territories, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.