Toward a fair, equitable, and accurate U. S. census

The primary goal of the nationwide census is to count the people in the U. S. every 10 years to assure their proper representation in the government. But the 2020 census was fraught with undercounts and overcounts in many states, according to the analysis of Kelly Percival, Senior Counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, and the co-author of the recent study “Improving the Census: Legal and Policy Reforms for a More Accurate, Equitable, and Legitimate Count.” The study not only analyzes the failures of the 2020 census (such as undercounting Blacks, LatinX, and American Indian peoples), but also lays out a blueprint to fix the census system and the inherent inequities in the current process to assure fair and equitable representation and allocation of government funding.