WASHINGTON — With the Trump administration’s decision to end the 2020 census count four weeks early, the Census Bureau now has to accomplish what officials have said it cannot do: accurately count the nation’s hardest-to-reach residents — nearly four of every 10 households — in just six weeks.
The result is both a logistical challenge of enormous proportions that must take place in the middle of a pandemic, and yet another political crisis for the census, historically a nonpartisan enterprise. The announcement, which came Monday evening, immediately generated sharp criticism.
On Tuesday, four former directors of the Census Bureau issued a statement warning that an earlier deadline would “result in seriously incomplete enumerations in many areas across our country,” and urged the administration to restore the lost weeks. The directors, who served under Democratic and Republican presidents, also urged Congress to assemble a trusted body of experts to develop standards for assessing the quality of the bureau’s population totals. Continue reading.