OUR CHAOTIC JOURNEY
to the 2020 U.S. Population of 331,449,281
By Maryann Hudson
We were met at doors with guns. Held at gunpoint. Chased by dogs. Interrupted people having sex, and suffered unceasing vitriol from Trump haters, because we represented Trump's government, and from Trump supporters, who thought we were the deep state.
As one of 309,000 census takers in 2020, I can say we weren't very popular. With 56 million addresses to visit, we plodded through a pandemic, record-setting storms and wildfires, calamitous technology, and the chaos of President Trump's interference to count the population of the nation, only to see it morph into a daily confrontation and explanation of the tenuous condition of our country in 2020.
One woman met a census taker at her door with a gun and held her finger on the trigger for the entire survey interview. The census taker wanted to run but was afraid to move, so he continued to ask questions, and she answered them. And he walked away alive.
On doorsteps across the nation we were met with life without pretense, and we saw how this rawness manifested in a historically dark and lonely period of our country. Some days, it was like being introduced to a collection of extreme characters you'd heard about and wished you've never met. At other times, the experiences were tender and precious.
Along the way, groups began forming on social media that seemed to serve somewhat as therapy for enumerators (formal name for census takers). As a journalist, I saw how the posts documented, from a unique historical perspective, the confused and troubled mindset of our nation in 2020.
I began contacting census takers for permission to use their stories for a book, and have since posted several on this website, thecensustakers.com. The census taker job is so unusual; the experiences were remarkable. The stories tell of the awkward, rewarding and sometimes dangerous interaction of strangers of different cultures, who, in 2020, and still, live in a country mired in uncertainty and polarized by uncompromising political postures, on both sides of the aisle. The Great Divide illustrates this perfectly, when political opposites chase off a census taker by shouting arguments that are basically the same. Hell Yeah! is another bizarre encounter, this one between a Trumpster and a trembling census taker afraid he's about to take his last rites.
Many stories are just pure fun--check out the naked man standing in the desert in A Dad's Bod with Super-tan Butt Cheeks; or the absurdity of Will the Real Census Taker Please Stand? (a woman decides the census taker is a fake, calls the police, and decides the cop's a fake also, so she calls the cops on the cop). And for the all-around experience, Bit By a Recluse Spider/ER Visits, and a Lady with No Pants On .
Some experiences tore at the soul, offering opportunities to step out of our role and turn a basic task into an occasion of grace: How Can I be Sure? bares the heart of a census taker in Los Angeles who fears the information she input from an interview will cause the man to be deported and his children left behind without parents; Luck is Underestimated is of a census taker in Seattle who noticed a fresh bruise on the face of the woman he was interviewing, persuaded her to call the police, then waited with her until the abuser was face down and handcuffed on a hood and taken away; Shim gives us a doorstep discussion between a census taker with a blue mohawk and a man with a trach and speaking tube about the daily reality of being LGBTQ+. Devastation follows a census taker in Oregon who traveled through towns destroyed by wildfires to get to his cases, only to find some of the houses had burned down. And in Mobile, Ala. Mrs. M. & Hurricane Sally is about a census taker and her family who returned during the storm to help impoverished seniors she had met when doing the census.
Setting Out
The census was to start in April, but was delayed in most areas until August because of COVID-19, so we knew the probability of people opening their doors to us was exceedingly low. We understood the pandemic concerns, but we hadn’t realized how equally obstructing and unrestrained a lawless political divide would be. Widespread mistrust and fear of government also kept a lot of doors closed, or slightly cracked, then closed.
After a four-month delay, and with the Census Bureau scrambling through a new schedule and the Trump administration impeding the process, we were set loose; masked, smiling with our eyes, knocking on doors of people who don’t want to answer, yet some do, and we are off the porch and way back, and they don’t want us, but some are too nice to deny us.
We are strangers, but are about to get personal. Some want to be counted. Some don’t. People had been locked down for months. Many had died.
The climate of the 2020 presidential election was so explosive that political signs or flags in a yard clued us that a doorstep encounter might not go well. We weren't surprised to be met with hate, but the degree of that hate was astounding.
With the pandemic, people had lost their jobs, their houses; their lives. Inside the fury of politics, some people lost their sense of country. And while, from a distance, the vileness of the extreme political voice can conjure a conclusion of eccentricity, being cornered by it on a doorstep gives a frightening understanding of its depth. It's damn scary.
This was our audience.
Meanwhile, the Census Bureau couldn't escape the Trump administration's interference, which loomed large in destroying all semblance of operational order. The process was made worse by the Bureau's inept tech, disorganized management, and a painstaking questionnaire with a section on race that confused Hispanics, and us, because the Bureau deemed that Hispanic was not a race. There were a lot of blank stares.
When at someone's door, the software of the handheld iPhone was laborious, and, at times, unworkable. The office software was equally insufficient. People would show us the confirmation number from when they filled out the census online, and we would confirm it with the office, but the overnight computer system would override it. Sometimes the next day another census taker was sent to the same door.
The scoldings we endured on these doorsteps were not always about politics. The Bureau's bumbling tech system had worked some people into a rage. One guy called a census office and said he'd shoot out the tires of the next census person who visits him--he said he had received 11 mailers, had self-responded on the internet, did a phone response, and had four complete at-door interviews. They just wanted us to quit coming. Who could blame them?
The Constitution demands an official count of the population every 10 years, and its importance cannot be overestimated. There is no option to forego it because of circumstance. The count determines for the next decade the trillions in funding for federal, state, local and tribal programs, such as schools, hospitals, public transportation and infrastructure--which can even include fixing potholes. Studies have shown how just a 1% undercount in a state can result in millions of dollars in annual federal funding lost to communities. We worried about that. See The Homeless Night.
Politically, the count decides who holds the power in Congress. It determines apportionment, which is the allocation of seats in the H0use of Representatives. Together with other census demographics, the count is used for redistricting--the redrawing of electoral maps for congressional and state legislative districts. This distribution of political power is what Trump wanted to control.
Are You a Citizen?
The politicalization of the census began early in the Trump administration when it tried to add a citizenship question to the census. The Supreme Court denied it--the Constitution mandates every whole person be counted, not just citizens--but Trump somewhat won, anyway. Minority groups in already hard-to-reach communities were scared away even further from census participation.
There are about 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the country, based on estimates in 2017 by the Pew Research Organization. Trump wanted to exclude them from the population count in states with large immigrant communities to reduce their representation in Congress and to help expand Republican electoral districts.
By law, congressional districts have to be equal in population and represent the race and ethnicity of communities. Political parties, however, often avoid this by either scattering a district of opposing voters to dilute their electoral power, or containing opposing voters by putting them all in one district. This lawless maneuver is called gerrymandering, which is illegal, but for some inexplicable reason not often made accountable.
So with the citizenship question shot down, Trump issued an executive order for federal agencies to use government records to determine undocumented immigrants. He then began a relentless litigious saga to stop the census count a month early. This would give him the population results while still in office, and also shorten the time for census takers to count minority groups. And to
ensure cooperation, Trump installed his own high-level people in the Bureau.
Stop the Census
Before Stop the Steal, Trump's quest was to Stop The Census. The legal maneuvering and judicial proceedings caused the census end date to change often, which made planning impossible for the Bureau. And for us.
We worked a lot of overtime near the end and focused on obtaining the most important statistic, the head count, often passing on repeated attempts to obtain demographic information: ages, race, names, etc. Many of the responses came from proxies--neighbors, the mailman, building managers--all who knew little about a particular household other than the number of people who probably lived there.
The Bureau estimates that 5% to 6% of respondents didn't answer questions about their race, Hispanic background and age. In 170 previous years of U.S. Censuses, the average rate of non-response was 1% to 3%.
The Supreme Court eventually allowed Trump to stop the count two weeks early, which may not seem like much lost time, but tell that to New York, who lost a seat in the House of Representatives because its count came up 89 people short of what was needed. Or to Minnesota, which barely kept a seat because of a mere 26 people.
The Count
Once Trump was voted out of office and his Census Bureau lackeys were gone, the agency regrouped. In April, 2021, it announced a final population count of just under 331.5 million. It's the slowest growth for the country since the depression, and second slowest in U.S. history, which piqued questions of accuracy. The Bureau will issue a review of the count in 2022, but the results won't change the apportionment.
In the Bureau's defense, it worked tirelessly to fill the gaps in the count and demographics by using other studies and agency records--social security, etc., and employing an internal mathematical process called imputation. How much this increased the accuracy is unknown. One method to determine accuracy is based on comparing population estimates to results--but who knows if the estimates were correct?
The racial makeup of the country is also in question. With Hispanic and Latino not an option for the question of race, the "some other race" category was chosen by 50 thousand respondents, including 45 thousand Latinos, NPR reports. So "some other race" has emerged as the second largest racial group behind white. Researchers worry this clouds the data needed to address racial inequities.
Also, to protect confidentiality and ward off successful hacking, the Bureau employed a tactic called differential privacy, which changes some of the data of census participants and demographics to protect privacy. This method set off a maelstrom of objections by demographers and data experts, who assert it causes issues of inaccuracy. All this, and the scheming maneuvers of redistricting by both parties, are playing out in backrooms, courtrooms and public forums and will continue for years going forward.
Questioning the Count
Researchers continue to question the accuracy of the count. Many cities have refuted the census results. The Associated Press reports that one city in Ohio was downgraded to a village because of the final census count, but city officials knew its population had grown handily in the past decade and conducted its own recount to prove it, and they did.
In Seymour, Mo. officials of this small town couldn't figure how its population declined. They compared public records of about 841 residential utility customers to the Bureau's population count of 749, and wondered if the 92 people the Bureau didn't count live in a cardboard box. They also checked the Bureau's count of 102 vacant homes and found the town has only 30.
Several college towns believe they were undercounted because students, who make up a major part of their population, had scattered because of the pandemic. Colleges were abandoned, and the bureau had to determine if there were duplicate responses: was a student counted at college and also at home--or even counted at all? Boston officials said they plan to challenge its census results believing that its college students, foreign-born populations, and prisons were undercounted.
One analysis, by the Urban Institute, concluded 1.6 million people nationwide went uncounted, most of whom were minorities, renters, children and homes where a noncitizen was present. Among states, the analysis shows Texas had the largest undercount and Minnesota the largest overcount. For the next decade, Texas will receive less funding of federal aid and Minnesota will get more. Just in the 2021 Medicaid reimbursements, a study shows Texas will lose $247 million and Minnesota will gain $156 million.
Like many of my colleagues, I came away from the census wondering how, with all the obstacles, an accurate count could be possible. The process was underfunded from the start--blame the feds and states--and only half as many census takerrs were hired in 2020 than in 2010. Of course, the pandemic had also deterred many workers.
Even the census day, April 1, 2020, brought problems. The count was based on where someone lived only on that day, and by the time the census finally began in August many in the nation had moved. Some had traveled outside the country and couldn't come back. Proxies from neighbors weren't easy when someone had moved. In dense urban areas, neighbors often didn't know who lived next door to them in August much less dating back to April.
To add to the challenge, from mid-August through mid-October, four hurricanes and three tropical storms battered the South, with heavy rain and damage stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic coast and north to states in all directions. Five of those storms hit Louisiana. Census takers were funneled from one city and state to the next to avoid hurricanes, only to find themselves holed up in hotels in the path of tornados.
In the West, during that same time period, entire neighborhoods were destroyed by uncontrollable wildfires, with the smoke traveling as far as Europe. In Oregon, one census worker drove to his cases and found some of the houses had burned down. In some cities, the temperatures hit triple-digits.
And, in the Midwest, George Floyd's tragic murder brought shouts and protests for social justice on streets nationwide. The cries awakened some; but infuriated others. Some of that backlash landed on us.
The Bureau's Take
Finally, in May 2022, the Bureau announced significant count discrepancies in 14 states – six states were undercounted; eight states were overcounted, according to its Post Enumeration follow-up. The AP reported that 1 in 20 residents in Arkansas and Tennessee were not counted, and, along with four other states, could receive less federal funds for the decade. The undercounts in Florida and Texas appear also to have cost them congressional seats, while the overcounts in Minnesota and Rhode Island helped them save a seat. These new numbers will not change a state's Congressional seats or electoral votes for the next decade. What's done is done. (In 2010, the Bureau's follow-up survey showed no significant overcounts or undercounts, NPR reports.)
The CensusTakers Take
Census takers know there were many doors that didn't open, and more we couldn't even get close to. I worked large apartment and condo security complexes and it was difficult to gain entrance. There was a lot of wasted time maneuvering with building managers to gain their help. And they grew to hate us. The rejections and the scoldings by them were exhausting.
One time, I was stuck in the elevator of a high-end, multi-residence building. When I finally got out, the sales manager told me I deserved to get stuck because I trespassed, which by law we are allowed to do. But who wants to trespass?
We were always sneaking into buildings and hanging around security gates or garages hoping a resident would come home and let us in. All this was completely unnecessary. The Bureau offices should have pre-established a plan with building managers before sending us out. That's on the Bureau.
Census takers were also prohibited from talking to the media, but some voiced their concerns and complaints. Many workers claimed they either observed or were pressured by supervisors to perform unacceptable practices, such as closing cases without visits, falsely saying a household had refused to answer questions, and guessing the number of people who lived in a house. Some of these issues were told to me or surfaced in media reports. Similar allegations by census takers were documented in Trump's legal quagmire to stop the count.
To make it worse, many census takers have nightmare stories about how they were treated by Bureau supervisors and management. I was fortunate to have supportive supervisors and a great manager, but I received weird mixed messages from others in my Bureau office, such as an official calling after hours and threatening me with no work if I didn't participate in the overnight count of the homeless; or calling and telling me to turn in my equipment within hours after my boss had promoted me. My supervisors dealt with the same nonsense. The confusion penetrated from above. One worker explains this perfectly in his story, A Well-Deserved Martini.
As we neared mid-October, those of us who had endured the chaos shook off the political noise, ignored poor management and fought for the count. We were determined, in part, because we saw the neighborhoods and met the people who desperately need government assistance, and who deserve the right to equal representation. And, there was that overtime money.
In the inner city, especially, we got to meet those who are grateful to live in this country; who work the hardest for the least. Many of them even thanked us. They wanted to be counted. And that always felt good.
In all areas of the country, the heartfelt side of the job was undeniable. It helped power us through the obstacles. And, oddly enough, with all the craziness and the daily threat of getting COVID, most of us say we wouldn't hesitate to do it again.
We even missed it.
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