Have you filled out your census? Your neighbor probably has.
Not too shabby, Clark County.
According to the United States Census Bureau, our corner of southwest Washington has one of the best self-response rates to the decennial census in the state. As of Monday, 57.8 percent of households in Clark County had responded to the census online.
We’re beat out only by King County (58.4 percent) and Benton County (58.1 percent). The bureau also reports that Washington and Utah are tied for the highest self-response states west of the Rocky Mountains, with a 53.8 percent self-response rate statewide. The national average for self-responding households is about 48 percent.
The 2020 census marks the first time ever that a wholly digital questionnaire has been made available. In prior years, U.S. residents had to fill out and mail in a paper questionnaire or report their responses by telephone.
To fill out your census online, visit 2020census.gov and click the big green button that says “respond.”
Before the COVID-19 outbreak, the bureau wanted people to take advantage of the online option. Now, with the novel coronavirus grinding normal operations to a halt, they really want people to take advantage of the online option.
All field operations — including preparing census enumerators to go door-to-door, which at this point sounds about as realistic as rolling up to Hogwarts — had already been pushed back from March to mid-April. Now, it looks like field offices aren’t going to be reactivated until at least June 1 following a joint statement from Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham on Monday.
The statement also included a plea to Congress to formally push back the planned timeline for the census by four months.
Under that plan, the bureau would extend the window for self-response and door-knocking to Oct. 31, which would allow for final counts to be delivered to the president by April 30, 2021.