Census Door Knocking In Some Areas To End Even Earlier Than Expected

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A Census Bureau worker with a face covering stands in a park in New York City in August. The bureau confirmed on Tuesday that door knocking is ending in some areas earlier than Sept. 30.

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National
Census Door Knocking Cut A Month Short Amid Pressure To Finish Count

Still, these latest changes to door knocking — a critical census operation that helps ensure that people of color, immigrants and other historically undercounted groups are not missed — are likely to hinder public confidence further in the accuracy of the once-a-decade count.

Recent changes to the bureau’s plans, coupled with wavering transparency from the agency, have sowed growing suspicions that the Trump administration is attempting to manipulate the numbers to benefit the Republican Party.

Already sandbagged by the coronavirus pandemic, the bureau has been under pressure from the administration to finish counting by Sept. 30. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the bureau, has directed it to prepare the first batch of census results to be delivered to the president by the end of this year as required by federal law.

The administration, however, had publicly supported giving the bureau more time because of delays caused by COVID-19. It made an about-face after President Trump issued a presidential memo in July that calls for unauthorized immigrants to be left out of the census numbers used for reapportioning congressional seats among the states despite the 14th Amendment’s requirement to include the «whole number of persons in each state.»

National
Census Cuts All Counting Efforts Short By A Month

The earlier-than-expected wrap-up date for the San Diego area was disclosed last month during a public meeting organized by the San Diego Association of Governments.

«By Sept. 18, we hope that all of our workload will be complete, and there will not be any more enumerators out in the street,» said Roberto Garcia, a Census Bureau partnership specialist for the San Diego region, during the virtual meeting.

Garcia’s comments were cited Tuesday in a court filing, which references NPR’s reporting, by attorneys with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and Asian Americans Advancing Justice — AAJC, who are leading a federal lawsuit in Maryland that’s trying to force the Census Bureau to return to the extended schedule the bureau developed in response to the pandemic.

The National Urban League is leading a similar federal lawsuit in California, while census advocates wait to see whether Congress will move forward with legislation put forth by House and Senate Democrats that would extend legal deadlines for reporting census results and could give the bureau more time to count and review its results for errors.

National
‘Not Enough Time’: Census Workers Fear Rushing Count Could Botch Results

According to figures the bureau posted Tuesday on its website, the local census office for San Diego still has about a third of its door-knocking work to complete in just over two weeks.

«This gives me pause as to why the Census Bureau believes it can enumerate the remaining households accurately in less time than it has allowed,» said Lowenthal, the census consultant. «I think it is premature to set an artificial early end date for the operation in San Diego, which could suggest to enumerators that they need to move through their caseloads more quickly than they otherwise would.»

That, Lowenthal warned, increases the risk of collecting inaccurate or incomplete information about uncounted households that may require more convincing to overcome their distrust of the government.

«It seems to me that this operation should take more time, not less, than in the previous censuses,» Lowenthal added.