The time to be counted has nearly arrived.

The 2020 U.S. Census gets underway in just days, and Rhode Islanders will soon be receiving mailings related to the 10-year population tally.

Much is at stake for the Ocean State, including billions of dollars in federal aid and the potential loss of a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Given the importance, advocates and officials have made outreach a top priority.

“If someone’s not counted today, it really represents a loss to the state for the next decade,” said Galen Auer, outreach coordinator for Common Cause Rhode Island.

Auer and John Marion, Common Cause’s executive director, recently visited the Beacon Communications office in Warwick to discuss their organization’s role in the state’s Complete Count initiative and discuss the process in which Rhode Islanders will be asked to participate in the weeks ahead. How it started

Conducting a population count every 10 years has been a core constitutional responsibility of the federal government since the nation’s founding in the late 18th century. It has become a massive undertaking, requiring the employment of hundreds of thousands of people nationwide.

The Complete Count concept, by contrast, has emerged only in recent years, starting in states like California and Massachusetts. This year marks the first time it has been embraced in Rhode Island.

Marion said the roots of the Complete Count effort can be traced to 2018, when the U.S. Census Bureau chose Providence County as the site of the nation’s sole 2020 Census test. Locations in Washington State and West Virginia had been initially planned as additional test sites, but activities in those places were significantly scaled back due to a lack of funding.

Marion said Providence County was chosen because it is “reflective of the nation as a whole” in terms of factors such as diversity and urban-rural divide. The test involved the hiring of hundreds of people and conducting a trial run of the full population count – which, for the first time in 2020, will have a heavy focus on digital responses.

Just more than 52 percent of households responded to the 2018 Census test on their own after receiving an initial mailing, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and just more than 60 percent of those households responded online. Another 7 percent responded using mobile devices, and 31 percent responded by mail.

While the Census Bureau said the 52 percent initial respond rate surpassed its goal for the test, Marion describes that figure as “really abysmal.” A significant hindrance, he said, was the fact that the test had “zero budget for outreach.”

“It was a big effort … We saw it didn’t go really well,” he said. “So I think Common Cause said, ‘Gee, well, we can’t wait for the Census to do outreach.’”

Based on the concerns regarding the test, Common Cause began to ramp up talks with civic leaders and other organizations about ways to enhance awareness and participation in the Census. That led to the creation of the Complete Count Committee, which features more than 60 members representing what Marion said are the state’s historically “hard-to-count communities” – everyone from children to minority groups.

Common Cause, Marion said, “kind of fell into a leadership role” with the Complete Count effort. That led to Auer joining the organization to help lead the outreach push.

Getting the word out

Rhode Islanders will begin receiving invitations to respond to the Census on March 12, and responses can be made online, by phone or by mail starting that day. Ninety-five percent of households will receive the invitation by mail, while roughly 5 percent will have an invitation dropped off by a Census worker. Some residents will receive a full paper questionnaire in the first mailing.

Those who do not respond will receive reminders in the following weeks, going through April. Between May and July, census takers will visit households that have still yet to respond.

Auer said the Complete Count Committee’s focus is on encouraging awareness of, and participation in, the upcoming Census activities. Just as importantly, it aims to ensure the Census reaches all corners of the Ocean State.

The committee’s work, Auer said, is “really a public-private partnership,” representing businesses, nonprofits, government agencies and community-based organizations. It has received roughly $700,000 in state and federal funding and another $500,000 in private donations administered through the Rhode Island Foundation.

There are three major components to the Complete Count effort, Auer said. The first is a communications campaign through Nail Communications, which has been retained by the state to oversee print, television, radio and digital advertising.

“This is all ramping up to March 12,” Auer said – the date on which the 2020census.gov website will start accepting questionnaire responses and the Census Bureau’s phone response lines will go live. “The communications campaign is really to get that visible, get that in front of people’s eyes so that they are aware that this something that’s coming in the next few weeks.”

The second component, Auer said, is a re-granting campaign. That involves the funding administered through the Rhode Island Foundation being distributed to community-based organizations to promote Census awareness and response, with an emphasis on the hard-to-reach communities Marion mentioned.

Auer said the organizations that have received the funding are based in the urban core communities such as Providence and Pawtucket, as well as Woonsocket, Newport, West Warwick and other places around the state. The groups have a “wide berth in terms of the activities that they do” – from planning a pizza night or community event focused on Census responses to providing financial support for canvassing efforts.

“Our goal there is really to put money straight into the hands of these organizations, because they’re already on the ground,” Auer said. “They already know these communities and they know the people that they’re working with, so from our perspective they’re the best messengers to talk to their communities about the Census and why it’s so important.”

The final piece is a field campaign – staff by Auer and two Department of Health employees – to oversee the various aspects of the initiative. They are charged, she said, with identifying “where there are gaps in our outreach and really [working] to fill those.”

What to expect – and avoid

Auer said the Census is “relatively quick” and easy to complete, including about 10 questions for each person in a household.

“It’s really basic demographic information … The point is for it to be as easy and as quick as possible,” Auer said.

Auer said this year’s sentence provides space for respondents to “get a lot more specific about their racial and ethnic identity” than in the past.

“Just being represented as themselves and as their identities, that’s really important for folks this time around,” Auer said, citing the “the political power that comes with being represented on the Census.”

The online focus of the 2020 Census is designed to enhance accessibility, and the questionnaire will be mobile-friendly to allow for easy response on cell phones and other devices. But Auer and Marion said the shift comes with some limitations – as well as risks.

“The goal of having it online is to make it easier for people to respond. But of course that’s only true if you have access to the internet,” Auer said, noting that roughly 17 percent of Rhode Island households do not have broadband internet access. Given that most households will not receive paper questionnaires in the initial mailing, many will rely on places like libraries and community centers to access the online response option.

Scams and misinformation are another concern, both in terms of online responses and, later, door-to-door visits from Census workers.

“When this decision [to adopt an online focus for the Census] was made five, six years ago, we weren’t talking about fake news and disinformation and sort of the level of scams that we’re seeing online,” Marion said. “So there is some concern that moving it online, people are going to be deceived.”

Marion stressed that the Census will not ask for respondents’ Social Security numbers or any form of payment. He urged respondents to exercise caution and report any contact they believe to be questionable.

“So if you see something that you think is suspicious, you should check it out before you answer it, and you should report it if you think it’s a scam,” he said, adding: “There’s a high-risk, high-reward sort of proposition here with moving it online, so we’ll know very shortly if it pays off.”

Auer and Marion urged similar caution for those who receive door-to-door visits later in the process. They also said door-to-door contact will be conducted solely by Census employees, who are bound by federal law to protect the information and responses they receive. Legally, the information collected cannot be used against a respondent by any court or government agency.

Community-based groups, for that reason, will not be part of the in-person survey process. Additionally, while people are welcome to a relative fill out the questionnaire or provide assistance in similar circumstances, there are restrictions in terms of filling out the form for others.

“In terms of going door to door, they really only want Census Bureau employees to be doing that and taking people’s information,” Auer said. “Going door-to-door to share information is totally fine, but they don’t want folks going door-to-door with their own iPhone and having people enter it in.”

What’s at stake

The results of the Census are used in the redrawing of legislative maps, from the local level up to congressional seats.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, the number of seats has long been capped at 435 – and how those seats are apportioned among the states depends entirely upon each decade’s population count.

Marion said Rhode Island was one of the last states to maintain its second congressional seat following the 2010 Census. The state’s population – roughly 1,050,000 people – has been “stagnant” in recent years, he said.

“We’re not losing population, we’re just not really growing,” he said. “But other parts of the country are growing, some very rapidly, and based on the formulas … they’re going to gain congressional seats.”

Currently, Marion said, Rhode Island is projected to lose its second seat in Congress – but the margin is close.

“We’re trending away from maintaining one now, but it’s going to be a nail-biter on that … maybe as few as 15,000 [people],” he said.

He added: “It would be the first time since 1789 we would actually have one [congressional seat] … We would lose a significant amount of political representation.”

The loss of the seat would ripple out in a number of ways. Marion noted that both of Rhode Island’s current congressmen, Jim Langevin and David Cicilline, have established seniority and influence in the nation’s capital, with the former in line for a prominent committee chairmanship and the latter a “rising star in the leadership.”

Additionally, the presence of two congressmen provides a greater reach in terms of constituent service – everything from receiving a tour while in Washington, D.C., to reaching out for assistance with particular issue. Going down to one House representative, Marion said, would change that significantly.

“We would go from having essentially the smallest two congressional districts in terms of population to the largest in the United States … They’re not going to double the budget for constituent services for the remaining member of Congress,” he said.

Beyond the political implications, Auer said Rhode Island receives roughly $3.8 billion each year – a figure that amounts more than a third of the annual state budget – based on its population count and number of congressional districts.

“It’s a lot of money, and that goes toward so many public programs and services that people rely on every day,” Auer said. “It’s our roads, our public transportation, it’s health care centers, it’s public safety, it’s schools and reduced and free lunches for kids, and children’s health insurance. I mean, I could go on and on and on. But it’s billions of dollars that, if we don’t count everybody, we risk losing a slice of that, not just for one year but for the next 10 years.”

Going forward, Marion and Auer hope the Complete Count initiative can become an ongoing part of the state’s Census effort. They said Common Cause and others will also remain vigilant in trying to stay ahead of changing trends.

“We’re going to have to do this every 10 years … And so we’re hoping that we don’t reinvent the wheel in 10 years, right?” Marion said. “That we learn a lot of lessons from what we did this time, that we just kind of activate all of this again in 10 years.”

To learn more, visit RICensus2020.com or follow @RICensus2020 on social media.