By Adrian W., Jack S. and Malcolm A.
The census is the U.S. government’s way of determining the population of the country. It is carried out by the U.S. Census Bureau, which is the government agency that conducts the Census. It is required by law in the Constitution to take the census because the government needs an accurate count to determine the amount of people living in the country. You can be fined for intentionally putting false information into the census form, leaving parts of it unfinished, or failing to do it at all.
Is the U.S.A. a democracy?
Democracy is a political system where all eligible citizens have a direct vote in passing laws and electing government officials. The U.S. is not a democracy because we vote for electors who then vote for the president. The amount of electors for each state can change based on how many people live in that state. There are only 3 electors in Wyoming, but there are 55 electors in California. Your individual vote translates differently if you live in Wyoming compared to California. This is because there’s a smaller proportion of voters to electors in a less populated state like Wyoming, then in a more populated state like California. Because votes translate differently in different states and individuals do not cast direct votes for the president, the U.S is not a democracy.
How does the census relate to democracy?
The U.S. Census has played a major role in the country’s democracy since 1790. We need to know how many people are voting in total, and how many electors and representatives each state gets. That’s where the census comes in. The census counts how many people live in the U.S, and it shows how important it is because the country spends over a trillion dollars on the census.
Is the census a voter security issue?
The 2020 Census was stopped early on October 15th instead of December 31st by President Donald Trump because of the coronavirus. The outcome of this is that the amount of people who are counted in each state may not be accurate. As a result, the number of electors in the next presidential election in 2024 also may not be accurate. In addition, some people in the U.S. might not be counted at all, which means that their vote might not be reflected in the Electoral College, and they might not be represented in the House of Representatives. Finally, some minority groups in the U.S. might be intentionally miscounted because they have a history of voting Democratic, and the current president is a Republican. The early ending of the 2020 census could make our country even less democratic.
The census is run by the Census Bureau, whose director is appointed by the president. We can make sure that everyone gets counted by completing the Census as soon as possible. One thing we can do is complete our U.S. Census forms so that there is an accurate count of how many people live in the U.S. You can do this by counting how many people live in your house and then writing that down also. We encourage people of all races to vote and stop the discrimination. We can work for equality and to improve the voting system. Minority groups are fighting against the census early, because a lot of people in minority groups may not have gotten to complete the census yet. For more information about how to create a fair count and what you can do, click these links: www.2020census.gov/ https://www.faircount.org/census-2020/#important
