It’s the last day to be counted in the census: Why it’s ending early and how to participate

California leaders are urging residents to participate in the once-in-a-decade census count before midnight.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted permission for the Trump administration to end the census nearly two weeks early, a request the administration sought to meet a legal Dec. 31 deadline to deliver data used to determine how many congressional seats each state receives. The same day, the U.S. Census Bureau released a statement that self-response and field data collection efforts would cease on Oct. 15.

That means today is the last day that for Californians to be able to submit their census responses by phone and paper responses must be postmarked by Oct. 15, according to the Census Bureau. Self-responses can still be submitted by internet until 2:59 a.m. on Friday by visiting 2020Census.gov.

“If you don’t, you will absolutely be invisible for the next 10 years,” said Ditas Katague, director of the California Complete Count – Census 2020. “We don’t want people having someone else, either erasing them or answering for them. Your community is going to be impacted for the next 10 years.”

The Supreme Court decision comes after a federal court in California ordered the Trump administration to extend the 2020 Census count deadline by one more month, which would have allowed census outreach efforts to continue through October 31.

Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer criticized the Supreme Court decision.

“Today’s decision will result in a less accurate Census — unduly predicated on guesswork, rather than actual counting — with fair political representation and crucial federal funding at risk for cities like Los Angeles,” he said.

About 69.4% of California households have self-responded to the census as of today, higher than the state’s 68.2% self-response rate in 2010. Over 10.5 million California households have self-responded to the 2020 Census, reaching 1.2 million more households than in 2010 and 1.9 million more compared to the 2000 count, according to data provided by the California Complete Count – Census 2020.

The state’s sheer size and diversity makes it one of the hardest states to count in the nation, according to Katague. California’s large immigrant population and high number of households without an internet connection and residents with limited English proficiency are factors that make the state difficult to count, she said.

The shortened timeline, coupled with the COVID-19 health crisis and state’s wildfire season, could cause an undercount in hard-to-reach areas of the state, she said.

“We’ve outpaced our 2010 response rate, which is great, because it helps the U.S. Census Bureau do their job,” she said. “So cutting it short ... it really leaves us wondering, how accurate will the count be?”

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “Even a fraction of a percent of the nation’s 140 million households amounts to hundreds of thousands of people left uncounted. And significantly, the percentage of nonresponses is likely much higher among marginalized populations and in hard-to-count areas such as rural and tribal lands.”

California has been involved in multiple legal challenges against the Trump administration over its earlier attempts to alter census protocol.

In July, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued the Trump administration over a memorandum to exclude undocumented immigrants from the 2020 Census formula used to calculate the number of congressional seats each state is given.

California, home to more than 2 million undocumented immigrants, could lose political influence and federal funding that is tied to the census count if the policy moves forward.

California was also among several states to challenge the Trump administration over the addition of a citizenship question to the census in 2018 when Becerra filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Immigrant advocates and state leaders argued the question would dissuade immigrant communities from participating in the census.

This story was originally published October 15, 2020 at 10:41 AM.