ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) – After asking for coronavirus-related deadline extensions in April, the Trump administration now appears to be abandoning that request by asking Congress for extra funding to wrap up the 2020 census “as quickly, and safely as possible” in a move that could help ensure the number-crunching for redrawing congressional districts takes place on President Donald Trump’s watch.
Census Bureau officials had warned as recently as early July that it was already too late to have the numbers ready without an extension. And outside experts predicted Tuesday that speeding up the timetable would lead to an inaccurate head count that misses people in hard-to-count minority communities.
“It would be like giving an expectant mother in the early stages of pregnancy a lot of money to have the baby in 4.5 months,” said John Thompson, a former Census Bureau director in the Obama administration.
The Census Bureau is in the middle of the 2020 census, and some of the bureau’s 500,000 door-knockers started heading out this month to households that haven’t yet answered the questionnaire.
With the new coronavirus disrupting census operations in April, the Trump administration asked Congress to extend the deadlines required for the U.S. Census Bureau to turn in the head count data used for redrawing congressional district and legislative districts. The Census Bureau also postponed finishing field operations for the 2020 census from the end of July to the end of October.