MONTGOMERY — The top federal official in charge of the 2020 U.S. Census visited Montgomery on Friday morning as part of a last-minute push to get citizens to fill out their Census forms ahead of the October 5 deadline.
Census Bureau Director Dr. Steven Dillingham told Yellowhammer News at the event that 3,000 Census employees were currently working in Alabama.
He urged anyone who had not yet filled it out to comply with Census takers they saw in their neighborhood or go to my2020census.gov to fill it out online.
For several months, the deadline for responding to the Census was set for September 30, but the Department of Commerce moved it to October 5 earlier this week. The deadline may be moved again, as the issue has become tied up in federal court.
ADECA Director Kenneth Boswell said he was “asking people not to be apathetic” when it came to the Census, adding that all Census takers were required to wear the correct personal protective equipment that guards against transmitting the coronavirus.
ADECA is an acronym of the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, the state agency tasked with getting Alabamians to fill out their Census forms.
“Right now Alabama is at about 95%,” Dillingham relayed, while saying the goal is “to get every state in the country over 99%.”
Dillingham, who reports to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, made two stops in Alabama’s Capital City on Friday, one at a grocery store on Atlanta Highway and one downtown where he briefed reporters.
The Census, which is constitutionally required to take place every 10 years, counts the population of each state. The results determine how many representatives a state gets in the U.S. House of Representatives, the amount of funding a state gets from the federal government, and the number of electoral college voters a state casts in presidential elections.
“It means so much for the next decade in our state. From the standpoint of not only the individual that is filling it out, but also their families,” Boswell remarked about the importance of filling out Census forms.
Henry Thornton is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can contact him by email: henry@new-yhn.local or on Twitter @HenryThornton95
