Answer the Census

Communities should be urging people who haven’t responded to make sure they are counted

This is crunch time for the 2020 Census. Hampton Roads communities should make every effort to encourage people who haven’t responded to make sure they are counted.

Counting every person matters — to all of us.

COVID-19 has, of course, complicated the process of counting every person who lives in the United States.

At first, the federal Census Bureau set July 31 as the deadline for collecting all data. Then the pandemic hit. By April, the bureau said it would need until the end of October. The Constitution requires a complete count by the end of the year, every 10 years.

But now, Steven Dillingham, the director of the Census Bureau, has said Census workers will halt efforts to count people by the end of September.

Counting everyone that quickly will be tough, if not impossible. Until earlier this month, the Census had been getting only information that people submitted in response to forms sent out in mid-March. People could respond by mail, phone or, for the first time, online.

Across the nation, 63.5% of households that had been sent forms — fewer than two-thirds — responded. Virginia did better than most states, coming in at No. 8 in terms of response, with 68.2%.

Now the hard part begins. Not until the second week in August did Census workers start going door to door, trying for face-toface interviews with nearly four in 10 households in America.

Alarms sounded when Dillingham said the count would halt at the end of September. Four former Census Bureau directors said that ending the count early will mean the results of the census are “seriously incomplete.”

The people who have yet to be counted are the ones who are harder to reach. They haven’t bothered to respond to the forms, or they never received forms. Groups that often are missed include young children and people without reliable internet access.

Some are homeless or living with friends, or they rent and have moved recently, all situations that have become more common during the pandemic.

Some are immigrants, maybe illegal, or legal but with illegal friends or relatives, who are afraid to respond.

Arguments are raging about whether the Trump administration’s moving the deadline up to the end of September was politically motivated. Undercounting certain racial, ethnic and income groups often benefits the old guard when census data is used to draw new congressional and legislative districts.

But failure to reflect the way the population is changing hurts a vibrant democracy.

Arguments aside, those of us in Hampton Roads should work to make sure the census yields as accurate a picture as possible of who lives here now.

That matters not only for voting districts, but also for billions of dollars in potential federal grant money. Census information about how many people in various ages groups and categories live here determines the amount of federal dollars that come here to help pay for housing, hospitals, school lunches, Pell grants, emergency services and other vital programs.

The information is also crucial for good planning. Even if census data doesn’t show us who lives here and what their problems are, the people and problems are real.

If you haven’t responded, do it now. Government agencies, nonprofits, neighbors, social media users — everyone should step up efforts to encourage others to respond to the Census. Spread the word that it’s safe to respond to the Census, and that Census workers are trained in health precautions.

For those who don’t want a Census worker knocking on their door, it’s not too late to respond by phone, mail or online.

Among Hampton Roads communities, Chesapeake has the best response rate so far, at 72.9%, followed closely by Virginia Beach at 70.3%. All the others are doing worse than the state as a whole, with Norfolk showing only a 60.3% response rate.

Let’s make this count as accurate as possible. We all have a lot at stake.