By Andrea Shorter–
This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for exercising new and traditional civic duties. By now it should be reflexive that when in public spaces we wear a face mask to protect ourselves and each other from the spread of the coronavirus. There is no time or need for debate; just wear a mask. It’s the best and the least we can each do to help abate this crisis.
It should also be reflexive that if you are eligible to vote that you are registered to cast your vote in the upcoming elections on November 3, with early voting actually beginning in October. Whether at a safe precinct polling place, or securely by mail-in ballot, by reflex, please vote. The opportunity to vote for a president and vice president who actually care about our survival against a pandemic, and protection of our voting rights and secure elections, cannot come soon enough.
Responding to the U.S. census should also be a reflexive act of civic duty. As a brief civics lesson, the census is taken every ten years. The U.S. Constitution guarantees every person living in the United States, regardless of status, the right to participate in and be counted in the decennial census. Census results are used to draw voting districts at both the state and federal levels, ensure fair representation, and bring funding to local communities for essential programs and services. Federal dollars are supported by undocumented immigrants who contribute to our economy and society but receive no benefits.
Sounds simple enough, right? Of course, true to form in its attempts to disrupt or dismantle other citizen or civic engagements—voting, peaceful protests, adherence to science-based and driven response to a pandemic—this administration has sought to disrupt, confuse, and basically dilute the power and importance of Census 2020.
Due to the pandemic, to its credit, the administration reasonably saw fit to extend the count from a springtime deadline to October 31. This extension afforded time to reorganize and adjust how best to safely enumerate populations by door-to-door count in the new normal of social distancing, as well as to ramp up promotion of the count online. Now, with a 63% national response to date, it recently announced that the deadline has been shortened by a month to September 30. Since the start of the census in the late 1700s, there has never been a 100% response rate. Still, by again moving and shortening the deadline, it presents a key challenge to engaging as complete a count as possible for the census.
One week prior to the announced timeline change, on July 21, the Trump administration launched the latest in a series of attacks against immigrants. The president issued a memorandum to exclude undocumented immigrants from the apportionment base following the 2020 census. The memo directs the Commerce Secretary to collect data on the number of undocumented immigrants so that these numbers can be excluded from the base to determine how many seats each state will be allocated in the U.S. House of Representatives.
While the memorandum does not impact who can or should complete the census questionnaire, it does impact the way 2020 census results will be used and heightens the fear of participating in the census. The administration’s earlier attempt to add a citizenship question to the census was unsuccessful, but the damage has been done as self-response rates are lower than ever. The new policy is clearly a partisan attempt to further target immigrants, create more divisions among the nation’s people, to disempower states, and to misuse census data.
For the 2020 census, I am very honored to have been reappointed as co-chair of the San Francisco 2020 Census Complete Count Committee (SFCCC). I serve with co-chair Anni Chung, another longtime community leader and famous Executive Director of Self-Help for the Elderly. As we did in 2010, we lead a 55 plus member appointed committee of community, civic, and business leaders that advises and guides the City’s outreach and education efforts for the 2020 census. The SFCCC operates under the auspices of the San Francisco Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs (OECIA).
In 2010, our broad-based and diverse SFCCC worked to achieve a record-breaking response rate of 73% to the census, averaging between 5–7 points higher than other counties, regions, states, and national response rates. This year, working against both an actual pandemic and an administration plagued by open hostilities towards immigrants, our response rate to date is at 62%. It is estimated that each counted person represents approximately $2,000 annually in federal dollars allocated to a jurisdiction until the next census. In total, this amounts to billions of dollars for the State of California. Equally important, it determines our number of congressional seats. By depressing the count to less than 70% by confusion, moving deadlines, and scare tactics in the midst of a pandemic, the Trump administration puts the most diverse state in the union, California, at risk of losing congressional representation and power.
On an accelerated timeline, our committee continues to work to reach approximately 400,000 hard to reach San Francisco residents who have yet to respond to the census. Many of them are likely in immigrant households affected by the partisan scare tactics.
The initially extended October 31 deadline would have ensured a reach of at least a 70% response rate. Now, with less than 6 weeks for a complete count in San Francisco, we are employing an all-hands-on-deck call to action to make sure that every person is counted. One such initiative is a call to action for each County District Supervisor to help intensify getting the word out to constituents about the deadline change, and to reiterate an SFCCC advisory concerning immigrant participation in the census.
So, dearest reader, if you haven’t already please make sure that you respond to the 2020 census. If you know of someone or a household that might not have responded due to concerns about immigrant status, please encourage their participation as well at https://my2020census.gov/
Thank you to the many SFCCC community partners, including the San Francisco Bay Times, which continue to educate and promote the importance of the census for us all—LGBTQ, immigrants, and people of color. The San Francisco Immigrant Rights Commission, SFCCC, and the Office of Civic Engagement & Immigrant Affairs urge all residents to participate in the census, stand up to intimidation, and affirm their right to be counted and fairly represented. Every person matters and counts.
Andrea Shorter is a Commissioner and the former President of the historic San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women. She is a longtime advocate for criminal and juvenile justice reform, voter rights and marriage equality. A Co-Founder of the Bayard Rustin LGBT Coalition, she was a 2009 David Bohnett LGBT Leadership Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Published on August 13, 2020
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