The first phase of Alameda County Census 2020 has ended with 60,000+ phone calls made by volunteers to remind residents of hard-to-count neighborhoods to fill in their census forms. An LWVBAE member who volunteered to make phone calls was impressed with the ease of downloading a specially designed, free App to her cell phone with which she could make calls from home to residents who had not yet filled out their census information.

The next phase of the Alameda County Census 2020, which will last until October, will see paid census takers or “Census Ambassadors” at food distribution sites trained by Census 2020 staff to observe social distancing with safety protocols, wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) and helping the as yet uncounted to fill out their Census 2020 responses.

Counties are anxious to include as many residents in the census as possible since the counts have important effects — including determining the sizes of federal grants awards to state and local governments and affecting redistricting or updating map boundaries for state senate, state assembly and state equalization districts.

–Ruby MacDonald, President