MAY JUNE 2018 | MOTHER JONES 39tute of Technology and worked
for the State Department in
Washington and the US Agency
for International Development
in Egypt before returning home
and eventually taking a job with
the collaborative. She wore a
stylish tweed blazer and skinny
jeans as she roamed the alleys
and enthusiastically took
photos of everything she saw,
including a dead rat. Sanjuan,
43, came from Mexico when he
was 17, and since then he’s
barely left California and hasn’t
attended school, apart from
English- language classes. He
wore a black “CA” baseball cap
and a blue T-shirt. Having re-
modeled many unconventional
structures as a construction
worker, he was an expert at
spotting hidden housing.
Quezada compiled the data.
A rooster darted from roof to
roof. A canine symphony arose
from behind the fences. “There
should be a census for dogs,”
Quezada remarked. Behind a
yellow one-story house with a
faded wood fence, they spotted
a small garage next to an orange
tree. It had two pipes for run-
ning water, which Sanjuan said
meant it had been converted
into a dwelling. Immigrants,
particularly those who are undocumented, often live in
such clandestine housing because they don’t have the credit
to rent a conventional home or apartment. The house next
door also had a converted garage in the backyard. Quezada
marked the residences on her phone and sent the informa-
tion through Facebook Messenger to the Census Outreach,
an intermediary that would verify the data and eventually
pass it along to the Census Bureau, which was cooperat-
ing with the pilot project in an effort to update addresses
in advance of the 2020 census. “You have to go the extra
mile to count people,” she said. “The average census worker
isn’t going to go into the alleys like we do.”
The census is America’s largest civic event, the only one
that involves everyone in the country, young and old, citi-
zen and noncitizen, rich and poor—or at least it’s supposed
to. It’s been conducted every 10 years since 1790, when US
Marshals first swore an oath to undertake “a just and per-
fect enumeration” of the population. The census deter-
mines how $675 billion in federal funding is allocated to
states and localities each year for things like health care,
schools, public housing, and roads; how many congressio-
nal seats and electoral votes each state receives; and how
states will redraw local and federal voting districts. Virtu-
ally every major institution in America relies on census
data, from businesses looking for new markets to the US
military tracking the needs of veterans. The census lays the
groundwork for the core infrastructure of our democracy,
bringing a measure of transparency and fairness to how rep-
resentation and resources are allocated across the country.
But with the Trump administration in charge, voting
rights advocates fear the undercount could be amplified,
shifting economic resources and political power toward
rural, white, and Republican communities. The census is
scheduled to begin on April 1, 2020, in the middle of the
presidential election season. Of all the ways democracy is
threatened under President Donald Trump—a blind eye to
Russian meddling in elections, a rollback of voting rights, a
disregard for checks and balances—an unfair and inaccurate
census could have the most dramatic long-term impact. “It’s
one of those issues that’s often the least sexy, least discussed
in certain corners, and yet the ramifications for communities
of color and vulnerable communities are so high in terms of
what’s at stake for economic power and political power,” says
Vanita Gupta, who led the Justice Department’s Civil Rights
Division under President Barack Obama and now directs the
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
A “perfect storm” is threatening the 2020 census, says Terri
Ann Lowenthal, a former staff director for the House Sub-
committee on Census and Population. Budget cuts enacted
by the Trump administration and the Republican Congress
forced the bureau to cancel crucial field tests in 2017 and- The bureau’s director resigned last June, and the ad-
ministration has yet to name a full-time director or deputy
director. The next census will also be the first to rely on the
internet. The Census Bureau will mail households a post-
card with instructions on how to fill out the form online;
if they don’t respond, it will send field-workers, known as
enumerators, to knock on their doors. But in an effort to
save money, there will be 200,000 fewer enumerators than
in 2010, increasing the likelihood that households without
reliable internet access will go uncounted. Enumerators
will carry tablets instead of paper forms, and the reliance
on technology raises cybersecurity fears in the wake of
high-profile hacks and foreign election interference.
“They’re putting together the census under a pall of uncer-
tainty,” says Kenneth Prewitt, who directed the 2000 census.
“How much money, who’s going to be in charge, what are
we going to do on the core questionnaire itself? To do that
under such a level of uncertainty is literally unprecedented.”
“They’re afraid. They tell you, ‘They’re
not going to count me. They only count
people with documents.’”
Sanjuan and
Quezada
search for
makeshift
housing in
Fresno.