The census should be true for you, true for your family, and true for your community. The census builds America so the census should look like America. Filling out the census says, “we’re here, we’re part of America, and our needs count.”
It’s your last chance to self-respond to the 2020 Census before census takers start going door-to-door across the country to interview homes that haven’t yet responded.
Participate in the census on your terms. Filling out the census on your own means you get to define yourself — your race, your ethnicity, and your household — and do it on your own time. It also makes it very unlikely that a census taker will come to your door.
If a census taker comes to your door for the 2020 Census, you DO get to self-identify but, if you’re not home, someone else in your home may have to give answers for you. But if you fill it out online, by phone, or by mail, you have the time to coordinate with your family and housemates to define yourself.
If the Census Bureau has trouble contacting your household, they may have to ask others who live nearby to help fill in the gaps. Your identity is too important to leave to chance — fill out the census on your own to make sure you’re represented correctly.
The census counts how many people there are to serve in each neighborhood, city, and state. Getting counted brings helps make sure people in your community are represented so your needs can be met:
RIGHTS: The federal government looks to the census to assign more than $1.5 trillion in funding for critical resources like food assistance, maternal health care, youth programs, and affordable housing.
PROTECTION: Knowing the makeup of our communities is key to proving when discrimination occurs, and enforcing anti-discrimination laws like the Voting Rights Act.
FAIR REPRESENTATION: Congressional seats and voting maps are based on the size and location of communities. Elected officials, from Congress to city council, should represent the actual concerns of our communities, not someone else’s agenda.
The constitution says the census counts everyone living in the United States — that includes undocumented immigrants and their families.
It’s your right to participate and when you do, federal law keeps your responses confidential for 72 years. The Census Bureau takes its legal responsibility to keep personal data it collects confidential very seriously.
That means the Census Bureau can’t share your personal information with ICE or law enforcement, it can’t be shared with your landlord, and it won’t affect any public benefits you receive.
Participating in the census is one way to advocate for change. Though the 2020 Census asks about same-sex relationships for people in the same household, it doesn’t give a way to identify sexual orientation or non-binary gender. With organizing and advocacy, we can change that for the 2030 Census. If you’re missing from the census this time, it’s even harder to build the political power needed to ensure future iterations of the census represent LGBTQ people.
Your identity and community deserve to be represented in the census.
Make the census true for you.
Respond today.