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Greatest Head Count in US History Nearly Ready for Launch

Associated Press

   ORLANDO, FLORIDA - With just a few months left before America starts
   taking its biggest-ever self-portrait, the U.S. Census Bureau is
   grappling with a host of concerns about the head count, including how
   to ensure that it is secure and accurate and the challenge of getting
   most people to answer questions online.

   All of that is on top of the main attention-grabber of the 2020 census
   so far -- a citizenship question that was nixed by the Supreme Court,
   dropped by the Trump administration, resuscitated briefly and then
   abandoned again.

   Beginning early next year, residents from Utqiagvik, Alaska, the town
   formerly known as Barrow, to Key West, Florida, will be quizzed on
   their sex, age, race, the type of home they have and how they are
   related to everyone living with them.

   At stake is the balance of political power in a deeply divided country,
   billions of dollars a year in federal funding and population data that
   will shape business decisions nationwide for years to come.

   Costing as much as $15.6 billion, the once-a-decade census not only
   captures the United States at a given moment -- in this case April 1,
   2020, officially -- but it is perhaps the only thing every U.S.
   household is legally required to participate in regardless of who lives
   there.

   Counting some 330 million heads is the largest peacetime operation the
   federal government undertakes. The Census Bureau hires a half million
   workers, opens around 250 offices and mails out a multitude of forms in
   English and 12 other languages to more than 130 million households.

   "The kind of scale we're talking about to count this nation is massive,
   massive, massive," Democratic Rep. Darren Soto of Florida said
   recently.

   Citizenship question

   A census has taken place in the U.S. every decade since 1790, and
   contentious legal fights about it are nothing new. But the Trump
   administration's attempt to add the citizenship question triggered
   lawsuits that carried the issue all the way to the Supreme Court.

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