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Six things to know about the U.S. Census and Florida
3 The Citizenship Question Is Gone But Not Forgotten
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked a citizenship question, which the Trump administration tried to insert, from appearing on the 2020 Census form. Proponents said it was needed to better enforce the Voting Rights Act. But such a question hasn’t appeared on the survey since 1950, and many feared it would deter millions of foreign-born people living in the U.S. from responding.
Although the question is dead, many believe the controversy will deter some from participating. Santos at the Urban Institute predicts that many Florida immigrants simply will not participate in the survey. “If they see anybody coming up their doorstep, they will turn off the lights and not answer. And when the enumerator knocks on the next-door neighbor’s house asking them if they know the people next door, no one’s going to answer there,” he says.
Other households with a mix of immigrants and non-immigrants may return the forms but may leave off information about foreign-born people “because they fear that information may be used against them,” Santos says. “I expect that there’s going to be a higher rate of non-participation than otherwise would have been there had we not gone through this year of turmoil.”
4 For the First Time, the Census Is Going Digital
In 2010, approximately 80,000 households were part of a pilot program and participated in the Census online. Next year, the whole survey is going digital. While the Census Bureau estimates its innovations will save taxpayers about $5.2 billion, not everyone is cheering. A July 16 Government Accountability Office report warns that the new technologies haven’t been properly tested and that the agency’s systems and data face “significant cyber-security risks.” As a 2019 report in Wired magazine noted, some of the potential threats are outside the bureau’s control. They include people responding on unsecured devices, fraudsters who pose as the Census Bureau in phishing attacks, fake websites pretending to be the Census Bureau and disinformation campaigns spread through social media.
