Census count continues in Southeast Idaho

POCATELLO, Idaho (KIFI/KIDK) - Despite the turmoil of 2020, census takers are still trying to count every person in America.

After a series of changing deadlines, the Census Bureau is continuing counting through Oct. 31, which means local committees are wrapping up their counts.

A statewide shut down and pandemic made things particularly difficult this year, said Pocatello City Councilwoman Linda Leeuwrik, who chairs the Bannock County Complete Count Committee.

“I’ll be honest and say it hurt us a bit, because some of the events we were gonna go to and the tabling we were gonna do, a lot of that got canceled. But we were already in such good shape,” Leeuwrik said.

By the time Covid-19 shut down the state, Leeuwrik said Bannock County's count was well underway.

“Our main goal was to exceed our self-reporting percentage from 2010, and even with Covid-19, we have done that,” Leeuwrik said.

In 2010, about 70% of people in Bannock County self-reported--meaning they turned in their census on their own. So far in 2020, 72.5% of people in Bannock County have self-reported. To put in perspective, Idaho's average was 69.2% percent, according to the Census Bureau's data.

Leeuwrik chalks the improvement up to two things: getting the word out and the internet. The 2020 census is the first to offer the option to take online, which 60.3% of Bannock Countians did.

See the data here: https://2020census.gov/en/response-rates/self-response.html

That leaves almost a third of Idaho's population uncounted, but that's where the census takers come in. The Census Bureau estimates about 30.8% of Idaho households have already been counted by door-to-door census workers.

Now, census takers are spending the final four weeks of October counting the last 0.1% of Idahoans who haven't taken the census yet.

If you haven't taken the census yet, you can do so online here: https://my2020census.gov