New Jersey lags behind other states on census as final push is underway – NorthJersey.com

The good news: More than 68% of New Jersey households have filled out their 2020 U.S. Census form, surpassing the number of self-responses of a decade ago. 

The bad news: New Jersey still has work to do in the last few weeks of the count to ensure it won’t be undercounted and lose federal money to other states.

Right now, the state’s overall enumeration rate, which includes self-responses as well as households counted by census workers, stands at 94%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Twenty other states have higher self-response rates, while 28 other states have higher overall rates.

“If you are in the bottom half, that’s going to be a consequence,” said Kenneth Prewitt, the former director of the U.S. Census Bureau, during a phone interview on Friday. “People who think you are doing fine — but if you are in the bottom half, that is a signal.” 

New Jersey could end up losing a percentage of funding resources to states that are closer to 100%. New Jersey is already considered a “donor” state, meaning that it pays more to the federal government — helping to prop up other states — than it receives in federal aid. 

“The amount of federal money that is allocated for states is a fixed number. It’s not a threshold number, it’s fixed, and all of that money will be spent over the next decade, and every state that is below the average will lose money to every state that is above the average,” he explained. “If it turns out that 94% is the average across the country, then fine. … But the issue at this stage is counting all New Jerseyans in order to get our fair share of federal resources.” 

The results of the 2020 census will affect decisions on which states get the most from the federal government, which sends billions of dollars in funding across the country to pay for hospitals, fire departments, school lunch programs and other services. New Jersey receives an estimated $45 billion of federal funding annually.

The census numbers are also used to determine the number of seats each state has in the House of Representatives and play a role in the drawing of congressional and state legislative districts. 

With only a few more days to go before the count ends on Sept. 30, state and county officials are boosting their efforts to reach harder-to-count populations, such as immigrants, non-English speakers and children under the age of 5. As the most densely populated state in the country, with one of the most ethnically diverse populations, New Jersey faces challenges in getting a complete and accurate count.

“We understand the critical importance of this census, and that is why we have hundreds of activities planned,” said Secretary of State Tahesha Way, who serves as chair of the New Jersey Complete Count Commission. “We want everyone to feel and understand that the census is safe. That is very important. We want our hard-to count communities to understand that it’s safe that the data is confidential and that it’s easy to respond.” 

Census counting cut short

This year’s census was hindered by the coronavirus pandemic, which forced census workers to start door-to-door canvassing later than planned and led state and county officials to cancel in-person events and shift to virtual gatherings. 

A move announced last month by the Trump administration to end the 2020 count four weeks early created an additional obstacle, because it left less time for census workers across the country to reach out to those who didn’t return a form.

That change is being challenged in court and drew quick criticism from Prewitt and three other former directors of the Census Bureau, who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

They issued a statement last month warning that changing the deadline would result in “seriously incomplete” enumerations in many areas across the country. They also asked Congress to appoint an independent body to examine the census.

Nonetheless, Prewitt, who served as director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1998 to 2002, said everyone is working with the Sept. 30 deadline in mind. 

“You can’t count on the extension and can’t count on having more time,” he said. “And for all we know, the administration will close it down, even if there is a stay. They can say we will leave an office open but we won’t have enumerators in the field.”

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Robert Santos, the president-elect of the American Statistical Association, said the shorter deadline will not allow the census workers to quality-check their figures to look at where overcounts and undercounts may have happened. He said usually overcounts happen in wealthier communities where white people tend to live. 

“Minority communities tend to be undercounted, and they get less than they deserve,” said Santos, who is the vice president and chief methodologist director for the Urban Institute and has looked at miscounts in the census, “while other communities that overcounted or accurately counted end up getting more than they deserve.” 

He said self-responses are always better than information gathered from census workers in the field. If census workers don’t find someone at a certain address, he explained, they will collect information from neighbors or other means, which might not be as accurate.

“They are bringing the status of that address to final disposition, and that doesn’t mean they got a completed survey out of them, it just means they did all they could do to close it out,” he said. “It could mean a proxy interview or a real interview out of that household.” 

Santos also said self-response rates are a bit deceiving, since this year there were many more months to complete the form compared with 2010, when May was the last month to submit the survey before census workers hit the pavement.

In 2010, the nationwide self-response rate was 66.5% by May, he said. Currently, the self-response rate in the United States is at 66%.

“We are still behind the final self-response rate of 2010, and that is a problem,” Santos said. “And I don’t know if we will catch up in two weeks. Maybe if we had a month.” 

Undercounts can hurt states

Besides a loss of federal funds, states with slower population growth can lose representation in Congress. In 2010, New Jersey lost one congressional seat, because the increase of its population was slower than that of other states. Currently, New Jersey has 12 members in the House of Representatives, three fewer than it had in 1975.

James Hughes, a professor at Rutgers University who teaches courses on demographics, said even though New Jersey has seen a decline in its population in recent years, the state is likely not going to lose a congressional seat because of this year’s count. 

“Until we get the final number and compare it to the rest of the country, nothing is certain, but it’s not likely,” he said. “We would really have to have a real low count and real under-representation before we would lose it.” 

Bergen County Commissioner Germaine Ortiz, who leads the county’s Complete Count Commission, said the pandemic also spotlighted the need for federal funds for health programs. 

“You are basically investing in the future of our community — and how can you not want to invest in the future of your community?” she said. “Every person counts, and it does make a difference for all of us.”  

Bergen County’s self-response rate reached 74.9% last week, among the counties with the highest responses. Ortiz said that in the past few weeks she has reached out to Asian and Hispanic communities in the county, including doing interviews on Spanish-language media. 

“Mostly with Latinos and Asian-American communities, that is where I am pushing, because that’s our hard-to-count areas,” she said. 

She Ortiz said that among the communities she has been focusing on in recent weeks is Fairview, which last week had a self-response rate of under 60%. 

“It’s a heavily immigrant community and also a very transient community,” she said. “It’s very diverse: You have Central Americans, Brazilians, and also a big Muslim community, and Eastern European immigrants, so it’s very mixed — and transient, which makes it difficult for the census count.” 

Passaic County’s census outreach is headed by Freeholder John Bartlett, who said the undercount in urban areas is both a result of COVID-19, which has people reluctant to answer the door, and the White House, which has sent the wrong message about the census. The county had a 67.2% self-response rate as of Friday. 

“The efforts that the president took to make immigrants and people of color skeptical of the census has not helped,” said Bartlett, the head of the Passaic County Complete Count Committee. “And people have a whole [lot] of other things on their mind in the pandemic.” 

Ice cream and backpack giveaways

Robocalls, texting, and ice cream and backpack giveaways are being planned in the coming days in local communities across the state to get people to fill out their census forms.

On Saturday, Passaic Mayor Hector Lora turned to free tacos to draw residents to fill out the form. He bought 3,000 tacos from Taqueria Los Amigos, and all residents who claimed the free tacos were asked to fill out the form. 

Some, like Pedero Fortozo, said they hadn’t filled out their survey yet and were given an on-the-spot tutorial. 

“Yeah, I am filling it out,” Fortozo said. “It is important.”

In East Orange, a caravan of cars and a float blaring music will be driving along neighborhoods handing out giveaways, Essex County officials said. They said that along the route, the caravan will stop at locations where other team members will help residents complete the form.  

Crane Kim, the census project director for the Asian Women’s Christian Association in Englewood, said the group has been setting up “mobile pop-up centers’’ for the last several weeks consisting of three tables with laptops in areas where there are significant immigrants from Asian countries, such as Ridgefield, Palisades Park, Cliffside Park and Edgewater. 

Volunteers at the events are able to speak Korean, Mandarin and Japanese, Kim said. 

“We ask people if they have filled out the census. and if they have not, we help them,’’ Kim said, estimating that they have talked to hundreds of people and helped a few dozen families fill out census forms.  

Next week, on Thursday and Saturday, Sept. 24 and 26, volunteers will be at a free flu shot and census event outside the Englewood Health Department in Englewood. 

Kim said he is concerned about Edgewater’s self-response rate, which as of last week stood at 58.9, among the lowest in Bergen County, whereas in some places like Glen Rock the self-response rate is 90.5%.   

“The southern part of Edgewater, there are a lot of Spanish residents. Their participation rate is a little low,’’ he said. 

In Paterson, where self-response rates were at 52.7%, Mayor Andre Sayegh said he’s hopeful last-minute robocalls and sending targeted text messages to people in low-response areas will increase the city’s response numbers. 

“We are also airing commercials on television and on the internet until the end of the month. We also partnered with local pastors to launch Census Sundays at our churches,” Sayegh said.

Bartlett said the all-volunteer committee was tasked with reaching across numerous language barriers to get the word out about the census, and due to the pandemic it has had to rely mostly on social media. The committee held a series of Facebook Live events and produced videos in several languages, including English, Spanish, and Arabic.

Volunteers with the Passaic County Complete Count Committee have also donned masks and held numerous outreach programs over the summer, focusing on census tracts where the response has been slow. 

To gain attention, the committee has brought along an ice cream truck. People hear the jingle-jangle of the truck and head outside. 

“Fill out the census, and while you’re at it, have an ice cream,” Bartlett said.

Staff Writers Richard Cowen and Matt Fagan contributed to this article. 

Monsy Alvarado is the immigration reporter for NorthJersey.com. To get unlimited access to the latest news about one of the hottest issues in our state and country,  please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: alvarado@northjersey.com Twitter: @monsyalvarado