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City of Greencastle’s Census response rate at 65 percent

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

The City of Greencastle announced today that 65 percent of residents have completed their census forms.

Meanwhile, 53 percent of Putnam County residents have completed the Census, ranking 67th among the state’s 92 counties.

Return rates for other communities can be found at 2020 Census.

“Local projects, like street and road improvements, or even the recent grants related to COVID-19 are based on Census data,” Greencastle Mayor Bill Dory said. “During this time while we are staying at home, I encourage people to take a few minutes and complete the Census so we can be fully counted.”

There are several ways to complete the Census:

•Online, at 2020 census.
•By phone, at 1-844-330-2020.
•Through the U.S. Mail, by completing and mailing the Census form.

What questions are on the Census?

The 2020 Census will ask:

1. How many people are living or staying in your home on April 1, 2020.

2. Whether the home is owned or rented.

3. Each person's sex.

4. Each person's age.

5. Each person's race.

6. Whether each person is of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin.

7. The relationship of each person to the householder.

How will the Census affect me?

In March 2020, all residential addresses received an invitation in the mail to participate

in the 2020 Census. The online Census form will be available in 12 languages other than

English, and language guides are available for 60 languages.

Households that have not participated in the Census may be contacted at their home by a Census Bureau representative.

Any information you share with the Census Bureau is strictly confidential. By law

the Census Bureau cannot share individual responses with anyone, including any court

of law, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Internal

Revenue Service, state or federal welfare departments, or governments and programs.

The Census Bureau only uses individual responses to produce summary statistics,

which further protects individuals from being identified inadvertently.

What is the Census?

The Decennial Census (Census) is a full count of United States residents, which

includes all people who live in the United States. The Census is conducted by the U.S.

Census Bureau every 10 years, and is mandated under Article 1, Section 2 of the US

Constitution. After collecting data from households, the Census Bureau processes those data to

protect every resident's privacy. It then aggregates the data, and disseminates the

results to the president, the states and the American people.

Census data are most prominently used to:

•Apportion seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
•Distribute more than $675 billion federal dollars to state and local governments.
•Redistrict at the federal, state and local levels.
•Provide statistical support for grant applications.
•Help communities, like the City of Greencastle, plan for future needs.
Comments
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    How do they know what % of people have completed the census? The census is a counting of people, and a % is based on the total number of people...which they need the census to complete. Maybe the respective populations decreased by the 35% and 47%? (LOL)

    On the serious side - you are only required to answer how many people live in your house.

    Names can be Adult 1, Adult 2, Child 1, Child 2, etc...

    If you fill it out online, you can skip all the rest. Hit "next" and it will prompt you a second time for info. Hit "next" again and it will skip to the next question.

    Funny that they want all this demographic information but yet they cant ask the most important question: Are you a citizen of the United States?

    -- Posted by dreadpirateroberts on Tue, Apr 28, 2020, at 1:28 PM

  • Why is that the most important question?

    Also, am guessing that they know how many households they have contacted. This would be one way to get the basis for % completed. Not exact, but who cares. Just a way to get an estimate of completion rate.

    -- Posted by Shoelace on Wed, Apr 29, 2020, at 11:59 AM
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    Shoelace -

    The citizenship question is the most important question b/c the census is constitutionally designed to find out how many citizens are in each state for purposes of representation distribution... how many seats in the House of Representatives for each state. (All that other stuff is useless demographic nonsense used to shape policy based on race/ethnicity/other factors which is technically unconstitutional and should be ideologically repulsive to people who believe in our system of government as it was intended.)

    When a majority of illegal immigrants in the US live in just six states (https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/u-s-unauthorized-immigrants-by-state/) and they are counted in the census, it robs the other US citizens of rightful representation in accordance to the US Constitution.

    As for the other, it was meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek. Hence the (LOL) at the end. Do you not understand that in order to get a percentage they must know the total number of people? So, until the census is actually done (and they have a total number of people) they cannot accurately determine a percentage of people that have/haven't completed the census. They could speculate and state that is what they were doing, or they could say "based on prior years numbers..." but they didn't.

    -- Posted by dreadpirateroberts on Wed, Apr 29, 2020, at 1:13 PM
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