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Politics

Census door knockers starting in 6 states later this month

Mike Schneider

Associated Press

Tags: Government, politics, Census
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Two young children hold signs through the car window that make reference to the 2020 U.S. Census as they wait in the car with their family at an outreach event in Dallas, Thursday, June 25, 2020. In a collaborative effort, the nonprofit group, The Concilio, partnered with the North Texas Food Bank, Catholic Charities Dallas and Bachman Lake Together, to hold the event where area residents were encouraged to report their family numbers to the U.S. Census. The outreach event was held in the Bachman Lake community which historically is one of many undercounted neighborhoods in Dallas County according to The Concilio. Due to COVID-19, the Census self-respond date online, by phone or mail has been extended to Oct. 31. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
Abigail Hernandez, a staff member with the nonprofit group, The Concilio, helps prepare bags of food being distributed at a 2020 U.S. Census outreach event in Dallas, Thursday, June 25, 2020. In a collaborative effort, the nonprofit group partnered with the North Texas Food Bank, Catholic Charities Dallas and Bachman Lake Together, to hold the event where area residents were encouraged to report their family numbers to the U.S. Census. The outreach event was held in the Bachman Lake community which historically is one of many undercounted neighborhoods in Dallas County according to The Concilio. Due to COVID-19, the Census self-respond date online, by phone or mail has been extended to Oct. 31. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
Caleb Antram of Somerset fills out a census form on-line outside of the Somerset Courthouse during the Somerset County commissioners census day party on Tuesday, June 23, 2020. (Todd Berkey/The Tribune-Democrat via AP)
FILE - this April 5, 2020 file photo, shows An envelope containing a 2020 census letter mailed to a U.S. resident in Detroit. A federal judge on Thursday, May 21, 2020, agreed to impose financial sanctions against the Trump administration for failing to produce hundreds of documents during litigation over whether a citizenship question could be added to the 2020 census. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Two young children hold signs through the car window that make reference to the 2020 U.S. Census as they wait in the car with their family at an outreach event in Dallas, Thursday, June 25, 2020. In a collaborative effort, the nonprofit group, The Concilio, partnered with the North Texas Food Bank, Catholic Charities Dallas and Bachman Lake Together, to hold the event where area residents were encouraged to report their family numbers to the U.S. Census. The outreach event was held in the Bachman Lake community which historically is one of many undercounted neighborhoods in Dallas County according to The Concilio. Due to COVID-19, the Census self-respond date online, by phone or mail has been extended to Oct. 31. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

ORLANDO, Fla. – Homes in six states across the U.S. can expect to get knocks on their doors from census takers in two weeks as part of a soft launch of the next phase of the largest head count in U.S. history, Census Bureau officials said Wednesday.

Starting in mid-July, homes whose residents haven't yet answered the 2020 census in areas around Beckley, West Virginia; Boise, Idaho; Gardiner, Maine; Kansas City, Missouri; New Orleans; and Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, will get visits from census takers hoping to ask them about who lives in their household and the residents' race, sex, Hispanic origins and relations to each other.

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The census takers originally were supposed to head out in May, but the spread of the new coronavirus delayed that operation for most of the country until August. The spread of the virus also postponed existing field operations for a month and a half, and caused the Census Bureau to push back the end of the once-a-decade head count from the end of July to the end of October.

One of those operations, in-person counting of people in “group quarters" such as prisons, drug treatment facilities and military barracks, restarted Wednesday with census takers heading out to facilities whose administrators hadn't yet submitted information on their residents. Just over a third of group quarter administrators had responded to the census, according to the Census Bureau.

These places were chosen for the soft launch because of the bureau's ability to safely resume operations there and the availability of personal protective equipment, the Census Bureau said in a statement.

Before knocking on doors, the census takers will have to take a virtual training class on COVID-19 safety protocols.

“If masks are required in the area, census takers will wear them,"' the bureau said.

The 2020 census will help determine how many congressional seats each state gets and the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal spending. Because of the pandemic, the Census Bureau has asked Congress to allow it to postpone turning over data for apportionment and redistricting.

As of Tuesday, 61.8% of U.S. households had answered the 2020 census questionnaire on their own either online or by mailing back a form. The Census Bureau is planning on hiring hundreds of thousands of census takers to knock on the doors of 56 million households that haven't yet filled out their forms.

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Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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