Disaster Alert!
“I’m not answering my door for a stranger,” the retired guy across the table told me. He owns a computer but said he wouldn’t trust sending his personal information across the internet. The woman to his left nodded: “Why aren’t they doing the census the old way, sending out forms?”
Well, the answer gets complicated.
The end result, alas, is predictable. The 2020 Census won’t produce reasonable correct results and, as always, the greatest shortfalls will be among those we really need counted – senior citizens and the disabled, low-income families and those new to this country.
How bad will it be? The 2018 estimated population for the City of St. Louis was 308,626 residents. I already have $20.00 on the city’s 2020 census population coming in at 285,000 people. That could be high.
Structural Problems
The Government Accountability Office put the 2020 Census operation on their ‘risk list.’ Among the issues noted on their website…
We found that the Bureau scaled back testing of new innovations in 2017 and 2018. Specifically, the Bureau cancelled the field portion of the 2017 test and then conducted a full operational test in only one site – Providence County, Rhode Island – instead of the three test sites as originally planned. — Government Accountability Office
The House of Representatives recently held an oversight hearing on the census. In a rare bi-partisan effort, committee members from both parties threw harsh questions at the census officials. Problems noted included:
IT Failures Much of the software and hardware planned to be used isn’t panning out. And, internet-based reporting system can’t handle the expected volume of data.
Personnel The Bureau is way, way behind in its hiring. “202 of 248 area census offices fells short of their individual recruiting targets…”
Administration Commitment The House committee chair called Trump’s preparations “woefully inadequate.” Individual members noted that constituents trying to contact the Bureau don’t get answers. For example, people who signed-up on-line for census jobs months ago weren’t clearly told that they wouldn’t get follow-up communication till March 2020.
Plus, the administration is doing the count on the cheap. Instead of forms, most of us will get letters asking us to go on-line. Getting a form or sending out a human counter is way down the schedule.
Some have wondered if Republicans really want an accurate count. Middle class white families are most likely to complete the census while people of color and those in struggling homes tend to be harder to count. If groups more likely to vote for Democrats don’t get counted, well, that’s not a bad thing.
Perception Problems
Back in 1990, when I ran Joint Neighborhood Ministry in south St. Louis. We added our logo and information to a census hand-out designed to assure folks that all the information they gave the census stayed confidential – it wouldn’t be shared with the police, the Division of Family Services, the schools, landlords or anyone else. We gave out the sheets for three months before Census Day.
Starting the month after Census Day I had volunteers ask people if they completed their census forms. The vast majority said “no.” They trusted JNM but feared the government had lied to us and that confidentiality remained a myth.
This week: Most Latinos worry the Trump administration could use census against them, new survey finds — NBC News
Trump’s gang didn’t help matters by fighting all the way to the Supreme Court to try to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
So, ironically, from the far right white nationalists and militias to the extreme left, undocumented immigrants and those in this country for generations agree on one thing: the U.S. government can’t be trusted.
Now, I suspect my lunch companions will get counted. After all, they belong to a service organization dedicated to helping kids. They may grumble but they will do what they are asked.
The question remains, how many won’t be counted?
I expect a helluva lot of people to be missed.
Glenn