That said, the bureau has perhaps more uncounted households than at this stage in any previous census — and under the worst circumstances in memory. Just as crucial, the speedup in the deadline gives experts less time to check the data than ever before. Inside Census Bureau headquarters, officials are assessing which quality checks must be jettisoned and data-processing software rewritten to finish on time.
And on the ground, the early door-knocking has been riddled with kinks like sloppy training, a clunky mobile app and unsettling encounters with people not wearing masks and who were unconcerned about spreading the coronavirus to the stranger on their porch.
Such problems have raised doubts among experts about whether the 2020 population totals will be accurate enough for crucial national decision making. The numbers are used to divide the 435 seats in the House of Representatives among the states, draw political maps nationwide and fairly dispense more than $1.5 trillion in federal grants and aid annually.
Shortfalls could mean
a severe undercount of the poor and people of color, and an overcount of whites — skewing both political representation and federal largess further away from already undercounted populations.
No census is perfect, and many have been marred by incidents like fires
in 1890 and 1980,
lost records and
even skulduggery.
But none has been rejected as fatally flawed. Indeed, no metric for a flawed census exists. Congress, which has legal authority over the census, could make that judgment, and a lawsuit could seek to. Either would put the census in uncharted waters.
