Here is an update to the ongoing saga of the multiple problems of conducting the 2020 U.S. census:

Senators unveiled bipartisan legislation on Tuesday to give the Census Bureau more time to finish the 2020 census ― an eleventh-hour effort to prevent a potentially severe undercount of the U.S. population, particularly in Native, minority and rural communities.

The census count, which is conducted every 10 years, was delayed for months because of COVID-19. Now the Trump administration is insisting on ending the count early, on Sept. 30, to meet end-of-year deadlines. The crunched schedule all but ensures that hard-to-reach areas, which are typically poor and minority communities, will be even harder to reach, if they are reached at all. The effects of an even lower count in these regions would be devastating: The areas would lose a lot of federal money and have weaker representation in Congress.

The Senate bill would extend the Census Bureau’s legal deadlines for reporting data by four months, into the spring and summer of 2021. It would also require the agency to continue its door-to-door field operations through Oct. 31, the original deadline set by the agency before it unexpectedly moved it up by a month.

You can read more, including the full wording of the bill, in an article by Jennifer Bendery in the Huffington Post website at: 

https://bit.ly/2ZMn0rQ.