The 2020 Census is much the same as the previous twenty-three censuses preceding it. The Constitutional mandate remains the same: to count every person residing in the United States at ten-year intervals in order to apportion representation of the nation’s population in the House of Representatives, as well as to determine the burdens of taxation at the federal level. But most importantly, the 2020 Census is an opportunity for all of us to participate in the world’s longest running democracy. By not participating, we undermine the very system we and the many other people who came before us have fought so hard for so many years to preserve.
Bureau of the Census, Suitland Md., Leffler, Warren K., photographer, 1965 November 30. Source: Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress.