MONDAY, AUGUST 10 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
Politics & the Nation
BY JOSE A. DEL REAL
AND FREDRICK KUNKLECensus experts and advocates
warn that the Trump administra-
tion’s decision to end the decen-
nial count a month earlier than
expected will result in a dramatic
undercount of Black and Latino
communities across the country,
which could have grave effects on
federal funding and political rep-
resentation in their neighbor-
hoods.
They point in particular to
alarmingly low response rates in
places such as the Rio Grande
Valley in Texas and the Bronx in
New York, where the coronavirus
pandemic had already interrupt-
ed outreach in some of the coun-
try’s hardest-to-count census
tracts. National nonprofits and
community activists are putting
together urgent persuasion cam-
paigns in an attempt to cram
three months of work into two —
driving through neighborhoods
with bullhorns taped to vehicles,
pouring funds into geotagged
digital advertising, and phone-
banking.
“We’re in the middle of a global
pandemic, and they might be
shortchanging every Latino com-
munity for 10 years to come. This
is cruel,” said Lizette Escobedo,
who leads the census program
for NALEO Educational Fund, a
nonpartisan Latino rights orga-
nization.
The census represents an im-
portant fault line in the battle
over structural racism and equi-
ty, with high stakes. It dictates
the allocation of federal dollars
and influences everything from
infrastructure investments to ed-
ucation programs like free and
reduced lunch to public health-
care spending. The data is also
used when deciding the boundar-
ies of legislative districts.
People who do not self-report
their information are usually vis-
ited by a Census Bureau worker.
Because of delays caused by the
pandemic, the federal govern-
ment earlier this year extended
the deadline for in-person follow-
up, from mid-August to Oct. 31.
But the administration abruptly
announced last week that it
would require data collection to
end by Sept. 30 instead.
By law, the final census count
must be delivered to the presi-
dent by Dec. 31 of the year it takes
place. Census Bureau officials
have said the shortened deadline
is part of an effort to meet that
requirement. The bureau de-
clined to comment about the risk
of undercounting communities
of color but issued a statement
announcing it would hire more
workers to achieve a complete
count.
Escobedo and others said they
believe the decision was motivat-
ed by a desire to suppress the
political power of communities
of color, which traditionally vote
Democratic.
Even in non-pandemic times,
the likeliest communities to be
undercounted are typically also
the most marginalized in the
country, said Diana Elliott, a
principal research associate at
the Urban Institute, a nonparti-
san think tank. That includes
communities of color, people liv-
ing in rural areas or without
permanent addresses, high-pov-
erty neighborhoods, immigrant
communities and places where
government distrust is high. Peo-
ple in majority White and afflu-
ent communities, by contrast, are
likelier to be counted.
“If certain areas are not repre-
sented with their full accurate
count, that means their funding
will be diminished as well,” El-
liott said. “I think, for example, of
the Rio Grande Valley. That area
of Texas will get less money than,
say, the suburbs of Dallas. And
that’s not really a fair and equita-
ble distribution of resources.”
Critics have previously ac-
cused the Trump administration
of politicizing the census. Last
year, the U.S. Supreme Court
stopped the census from asking
participants if they are American
citizens, which activists and ex-
perts said would discourage un-
documented people from partici-
pating.
Last month, President Trump
signed a memorandum in sup-
port of excluding the estimated
number of undocumented immi-
grants in the country from the
count used to apportion congres-
sional districts. Several groups,
including the American Civil Lib-
erties Union and a coalition of
state attorneys general, have filed
lawsuits to block the shift in
policy.
The administration’s efforts to
exclude undocumented immi-
grants, a radical departure from
past policy, has support among
some conservatives. Hans von
Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow
at the Heritage Foundation, said
he believes including them in the
count unfairly dilutes the politi-
cal power of American citizens.
“None of them have any right
to representation in Congress
because they are not citizens of
the United States,” said von Spak-
ovsky. “If you got rid of nonciti-
zens in the apportionment pro-
cess, California would probably
lose five congressional seats.”
The new deadline, however,
could disenfranchise American
citizens and legal residents, too.
Four previous Census Bureau
directors testified at a hearing
last month that the shorter time
frame is likely to lead to an
inaccurate count. The State Data
Center, a partnership between
the Census Bureau and U.S.
states and territories to make
census data available to the pub-
lic, also opposes ending field
activities a month earlier, said
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.),
chairman of the House Oversight
subcommittee on civil rights and
civil liberties.
“At this point, we’re seeing an
undercount of Black communi-
ties everywhere. Deep under-
counts of places in the South,”
said Rashad Robinson, the presi-
dent of Color of Change, a non-
profit organization working to
maximize the census count
among Black communities. “As
Covid continues to rip through
those communities, it is a very
challenging thing to see commu-
nities that absolutely need re-
sources that could be left out.”
On Wednesday, the National
Congress of American Indians
joined several other prominent
Indigenous rights groups in de-
nouncing the administration’s
accelerated timeline, calling it a
direct threat to their well-being
during a public health crisis that
may have lingering effects for
years.
“Our tribal nations and tribal
communities have been ravaged
by COVID-19, and an extension of
the Census enumeration period
was a humane lifeline during an
unprecedented global health ca-
tastrophe,” the groups said in a
statement. “An inaccurate Cen-sus count will decimate our abili-
ty to advocate for necessary ser-
vices for our most vulnerable
communities.”
Several experts said they are
especially worried about the La-
tino count in Texas, where more
than a dozen Latino-heavy coun-
ties have the lowest participation
rates in the country.
One in four Texans lives in
hard-to-count areas where pov-
erty, rural, and a lack of Internet
connections drive down census
participation, said Katie Martin
Lightfoot, who coordinates the
grass-roots Texas Counts cam-
paign, an informal committee
that brings together local leaders
and census organizers across the
state. Data shows that Latinos in
particular have the lowest re-
sponse rate statewide.
Data experts on her team have
estimated that even a 1 percent
undercount would lead to a loss
of $300 million per year for the
next decade.
In some ways, the deck was
already stacked for a potential
undercount there. While other
states dedicate tens of millions of
dollars to census outreach efforts
meant to boost the count, the
Texas state legislature provided
no funding at all. That left the
task of encouraging participation
up to local philanthropies and
nonprofits, Martin said.
“Think about covid-19 and the
pandemic and how much we’re
relying on these resources now.
And people are still going to need
those services, and that burden
will fall on the state and the local
governments,” she said.
The overall self-response rate
in Texas so far is 58 percent,
compared with 64 percent by this
point in 2010, said Martin. But as
few as 37 percent of households
have responded in some counties
in the Rio Grande Valley.
About 63 percent of all house-
holds in the United States have
completed the census, according
to the Census Bureau.
The new timeline has jolted
state and local officials even in
places where abundant resources
have been allocated toward the
count.
California invested $187 mil-
lion in outreach efforts to direct-
ly target the hardest-to-count
communities. Officials in Califor-
nia say the new deadline will
present significant challenges
but they are confident about
their response rate so far giventhe geographic and demographic
diversity of the state.
“The next few months are very
critical. Our job is made more
difficult with some of the most
recent actions by the federal
government, and so we want to
focus on tactics that are showing
to be really effective, like phone
banking with a patch through to
the U.S. Census Bureau,” said
Maricela Rodriguez, who works
in the office of California Gov.
Gavin Newsom (D).
Laura Russell, a census coordi-
nator for Carroll County, Md.,
said the mostly White, suburban
county has one of the best self-re-sponse rates in the nation. And
yet even there, officials worry
about an undercount, especially
among preschool children and
the area’s small Latino communi-
ty. They are mindful, she said,
that they could lose up to $1,
a head in federal funding.
Russell said county officials
and volunteers have approached
Latino community leaders and
businesses to help solicit re-
sponses. All materials about the
census were handed out in Span-
ish and English. The committee
also worked with Latino-owned
businesses and worked with the
faith community, such as theCatholic Church.
“I think the number one rea-
son [Latinos have a low response
rate] is they’re afraid of the
government. They don’t want
anybody to know they’re here or
to ask them questions,” she said.
The pandemic has derailed
even carefully tailored plans and
tried-and-true methods of reach-
ing these communities, includ-
ing canvassing events outside
grocery stores or census-focused
events at local parks.
In New York, political leaders
had signaled the 2020 Census
was a significant priority, but
those plans largely fell by the
wayside when New York City
became the initial epicenter of
the pandemic in the United
States. Escobedo, who runs
N ALEO’s census outreach, said
many of the funds the state had
allocated toward the census were
never distributed.
While Escobedo had prepared
for some of the political challeng-
es the census has faced this year,
she could not have anticipated
the pandemic.
“Latinos are dying at a faster
rate. Latinos are suffering finan-
cially more than anyone else,” she
said. “So now you’re going into a
community where you’re re-
minding them the census funds
schools and funds transporta-
tion. And they’re thinking, ‘I
don’t really have the time and
space to think about the cen-
sus.’ ”
But the administration’s re-
vised timeline, she said, is in
some ways more troubling than
the disruptions caused by the
pandemic because it is a self-in-
flicted wound coming from with-
in the government.
“Folks are actually terrified of
what a full count of Latinos can
mean. But we’re not going any-
where. This is our country. We
are American as everyone else.
This fight doesn’t keep me up at
night, it wakes me up every
morning,” she said. “I want to
make sure that I can take that
political potential and turn it
into political will.”
[email protected]
[email protected]E xperts: New census deadline may hurt people of color
Pandemic has already
limited outreach in Black
and Latino communitiesCALLAGHAN O’HARE/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Pedestrians walk toward the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville, Tex., on July 29. In some areas of the Rio Grande Valley, a
four-county region that stretches across Texas’s southernmost tip, as few as 37 percent of households have responded to the 2020 Census.MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES
Food boxes, each containing a reminder to complete the census, are
given to food-insecure people in Paramount, Calif., on Thursday.15
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