IA Joins Coalition Call for Senate to Extend 2020 Census Data Reporting Deadlines

The Insights Association joined with 370 other organizations in a joint letter urging the U.S. Senate “to give the U.S. Census Bureau sufficient time to thoroughly implement complex data processing activities and complete the most accurate 2020 Census possible.”

The October 23 letter, organized by The Census Project coalition and the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights, urged senators to cosponsor or support the bipartisan 2020 Census Deadline Extensions Act (S. 4571), a bill that would extend the legal reporting deadlines for apportionment and redistricting data from the 2020 Census by four months (to April and July 2021, respectively), as the Trump Administration requested back in April 2020. This would allow for the full five months of data analysis, processing and review originally planned by the Census Bureau to ferret out errors, such as undercounts and double counts.

The coalition letter emphasized that a “rushed census during a pandemic inevitably will lead to misallocation of political representation, government funding, and private sector investment in every state and community. If data processing operations are not thorough, communities most in need of resources to improve quality of life and standards of living will not receive their fair share for the next decade. Accurate data from the 2020 Census are critical to informed decision-making and resource allocation by the public and private sectors, including preparation for and recovery from natural disasters and public health crises.”

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ended an attempt to use the court system to extend the 2020 Census’ counting operations when it stayed a preliminary lower court injunction that had prevented the White House from ending the 2020 Census early. IA

Back in August, IA joined nearly 900 organizations on a Census Project coalition letter to Congress opposing a rushed count and gathered 87 business organizations and companies in a similar letter from the business community.

Howard Fienberg, VP Advocacy for the Insights Association, commented that, “The accuracy of the 2020 Census will in turn determine the accuracy of every survey in the United States for the next decade, since the decennial headcount is the benchmark for every statistically representative study in the nation, including other government surveys, like the American Community Survey (ACS). The U.S. has no choice but to get this right.”

NewsCoalition letter urging Senate to support bipartisan 2020 Census Deadline Extension Act (S. 4571) – 10/23/20Government Affairs