The Census 2020 is going to be a huge task for the Census Bureau. As the coronavirus outbreak forced people to maintain social distance, the tracking of non-responders can be extremely difficult and expensive for the Census Bureau.
Experts say, this year the census count is going to be a daunting task due to the effect of COVID-19. Those who have not responded to the census website, it will be very difficult to track them.
As per the regulations of the Census Bureau, Households need to submit the census form. And those who fail to submit the online forms, paper forms with census questions will be sent to them in mid-April. Tracking of nonresponding members will be done on May 27, otherwise, a fine of 100$ will be imposed on them. According to the previous reports, there was no fine levied since the 1970s
As per the census data, only 38 percent of Americans have responded from the opening date of census count from March 10. The Census Bureau was tracking the responses daily and the City University of New York is publishing maps of different states and localities of the census counts.
Census Bureau shaved its processing at Jeffersonville, Ind., and Tuscon, Ariz. There are massive public awareness campaigns were scheduled to reach out to households from different levels. Many campaigns are disrupted and also some campaigns have canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak. The Census Bureau expects citizens to respond as soon as possible. Because it is difficult and expensive to track down and answering census questions at a later stage.
As per data, the effect of coronavirus disrupted the huge parts of the campaign. Chicago has arranged a campaign of 100 computers kiosk online, but the social distancing measure hampered it. Detroit, one of the Census 2020 organizers, canceled around 90 public campaigns, it plans to enlist 600+ neighborhoods to achieve census response.
One of the biggest concerns is that the Census Bureau has not found out how to count those who don’t respond. For now, the plan was to keep track of the non-responsive citizens through a specially equipped
iPhone. Experts say the Census 2020 report was going to be filled out around mid-august. They say that no further extension has been held out and predict that the further the extension the more people may not consider to respond to the forms
The federal bureau needs to submit the census report by Dec 31. In 2010, 98% of the total population was sent their response was counted at that time, showed great results. Some mistakes of the 2010 census report, was 16 million were missed, 8.5 million households were double-counted and over 1.5 million were counted extra.
According to Terri Ann Lowenthal, a census expert, the Census 2020 has a huge task to accomplish and the coronavirus pandemic made it more difficult. The accuracy of the total count can not be easily predicted. She was worried about the consistency of the counting operations of the census 2020 and the accuracy of the report.
