The announcement on Wednesday is expected, and the key question remains whether the Census Bureau and the Department of Commerce will present the score to President Donald Trump before his departure on January 20. There are no penalties attached to missing the December 31 deadline.
The Census Bureau said in a statement that it intends to deliver a complete and accurate census for distribution in early 2021, as close to the legal deadline as possible. ‘
It is unclear whether the Trump administration has enough data to carry it out – or whether the data is sufficient to actually influence how many seats each state receives.
If the numbers are produced after Trump leaves office, President-elect Joe Biden is not expected to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count.
Wednesday’s statement said the Census Bureau continues to process the data it has collected from previous years online, on paper, by telephone and in person.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau, forced officials to complete the count by Dec. 31 – even after officials informed him that a truncated schedule would put multiple states at risk for an incomplete count.
The final schedule gave census officials about half the time they planned to do the complicated work of processing data.
Internal documents obtained in early December by a House committee investigating the Trump administration’s handling of the census have raised data issues and high-complexity issues threaten to delay the completion of the count until February. The director of the Census Bureau did not explain the issues, but said it “took place in previous censuses.”
Even before the data issues surfaced, the top official of the career census that manages the 2020 census said the bureau was finalized on the first or second week of January.
In addition to the political controversies, which critics said were harder to complete, the counting of the country’s population was also complicated by the coronavirus pandemic.
The inspector general of the department of trade said on Wednesday that the Census Bureau had cut a quality control process and determined that the issues were questioning the results for ‘more than 500 000’ households. It said that one of the reasons why the Census Bureau did not complete the quality controls was because of the compressed time schedule.
Although there are no penalties associated with missing the deadline, Attorney General Brad Rosenberg said during a court hearing in September that missing the deadline would be the reason for Congress to pass the deadline. numbers to reject.
“It is possible that if the Census Bureau gives its summary at some point in January … that Congress will still accept the number,” Rosenberg said. “But it is also possible – and I do not represent the Congress, so I just do not know the answer to this – that they might not do it. If they miss the legal deadline, it is unclear whether the Congress will still do so will commit to any numbers submitted by the President after that date. ‘
The result is not expected.
The delay and the rush to produce the numbers used to distribute congressional items are expected to have a ripple effect and could cause further delays.
After compiling the distribution figures, the Census Bureau draws attention to the production of the massive data files used by state governments to attract new districts.
For division, only a total number of people are needed in each state. But the redistribution data need more details about who the people are and where they live.
The Census Bureau has not yet announced when it is expected to complete the files. It usually works to meet the individual deadlines set by the laws of each state.