Here’s the good news for this decade’s Census count: With only one month left, Santa Barbara County has already surpassed the percentage of households that were counted during the 2010 Census. This past weekend, squads of Census workers fanned out throughout the county, knocking on doors of households that didn’t turn in their written questionnaires. By Monday morning, 68.6 percent of the county’s households had been counted. That’s up a smidgen from 68.5 households from 10 years ago. And there’s still a month left before the September 30 deadline.
The bad news nationwide is that the COVID pandemic and the foreshortened counting period — insisted upon by the Trump White House — is calling into question the thoroughness of the 2020 count. With the counting deadline moved up a month to September 30, about one-third of all households throughout the country — 38 million — have yet to be counted.
The COVID pandemic poses a problem for the Census door-knockers — technically known as enumerators — because fewer people are inclined to respond positively to questions from strangers wearing vests and bedecked in official-looking lanyards identifying them as Census workers. Making matters tougher still, the New York Times is reporting that one in three people hired by the Census to knock on doors are not showing up for work, in large measure because of health concerns.