Associated Press: Scramble to get people counted as 2020 census winds down

Census advocates across the nation made last-ditch efforts Thursday to get as many households to answer the 2020 census, which has been challenged by a pandemic, natural disasters, court fights and the Trump administration’s push to have it end a month earlier than planned.

The tally was mandated to halt at 11:59 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time on Thursday — 5:59 a.m. Friday for people living on the East Coast — but questions lingered about deadlines and who gets counted when congressional seats are allotted.

Advocates are particularly worried that minorities, and people in rural and tribal areas, are going to be missed due to the rushed ending of the count, resulting in less federal funding for those communities and perhaps fewer congressional seats and electoral votes for states that have large minority populations.

Census advocates who had been planning on two more weeks to encourage people to answer the census found themselves scrambling after the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration could end the nation’s head count this week.

“Everybody is leaning in hard to try to make sure they can reach as many people as possible,” said Kathay Feng, an official with Common Cause, the good-government advocacy group.

In Rhode Island, advocates went to bus hubs in Providence to make sure people had filled out the forms that ask about the makeup of their households. Armed with tablets to help residents answer the questionnaire online, teams of advocates in New York City went canvassing in neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens. In Detroit, residents were being given the chance to win $25 gift cards in exchange for driving to a church parking lot to fill out their census forms.