Why be counted?

Well our government opens 250 regional offices, hires half a million temporary workers, and sends cards to be filled out to 140 million households. It is called the Census and is the largest peacetime operation undertaken by the federal government every ten years. It wants to know just a few questions. Your name, age, sex, racial ethnicity, how many people live in your household , how they are related to one another and whether you rent or own. Why?

Well because it is important to this country and how it operates. It is so important in that it is mentioned in the sixth sentence of our Constitution. Read it. The information on who the people in this country are, is important related to how our government equally distributes political power across the states. The seats in the House of Representatives are based on our population. After the last Census Texas gained four seats while Ohio lost two seats. 

The Census is important because the data it collects determines how our Federal funds are distributed to each state. We are talking about $880 billion of our tax dollars. If your state is undercounted you might not be eligible for new road construction for example. Businesses use population statistics to help decide where to add jobs or open new stores. Sadly ignorant Trump thinks it is all a waste of time and money and his Republican Congress has underfunded the Census by hundreds of millions of dollars. Is there anything he does good for this country?

In 2020 for the first time, America will have its online Census asking the majority of people to answer the survey there. Dumb Donald threw another wrench into the system by also for the first time in history including a citizenship question. That was NOT written in the sixth line of our Constitution Donald. Folks don't want to be asked by their citizenship for fear for many reasons especially now with Trump's harsh immigration policies. So your town won't get federal funds because the folks who live there wand to remain anonymous? Yes. Sadly yes. 

Meanwhile Trump likes to break our laws which is why he is currently being Impeached for a variety of other reasons and all his closest associates with govt. positions are now in jail for crimes. It is against the law to disclose or publish any private information that identifies an individual. That law applies to the IRS and ICE Police and Census information. Thankfully the Supreme Court recently blocked this Census citizenship question that was going to be used by the Republicans to influence elections. 

It appears that an undercount in the 2020 Census is inevitable. The only question is by how much. How much money will not eventually be distributed to our towns and cities that have large uncounted populations? The best ways to fix things in this country is for all of us to vote and for all of us to fill out the Census form.