Northeast Ohio census workers are pushing forward with efforts to count Cuyahoga County residents after U.S. Census deadline was extended to the end of October.
Workers will be stationed in and around high-traffic areas like the county board of elections, Browns stadium and the recently reopened Heinen’s in Downtown Cleveland, said Cuyahoga County Director of Regional Collaboration Michele Pomerantz.
“It gives us real time to partner with other agencies to be in all the places where people are going to be in the last few weeks of October,” Pomerantz said.
The decision to extend the census comes after months of back and forth between the Census Bureau and Trump administration, much of it in court. It’s unlikely the deadline will change again, Pomerantz said, and workers are prepared to keep working through October.
“We have a schedule of events and plans that are happening every single day between now and Oct. 31 that we will continue to plug in until they say we can’t anymore,” Pomerantz said.
Community members can do their part to help get response rates up in their neighborhoods, Pomerantz said.
“It’s kind of continuing to find ways to double-check with your neighbors,” Pomerantz said. “Connect virtually or through text messaging to say, ‘Hey, make sure you took the census.’”
Anyone who isn’t sure if they completed the census or would like to ensure they were counted can call to check that they have been included, Pomerantz said.
“There’s no double voting, so to speak,” she said.
Efforts to improve response rates are currently focused on Cleveland and East Cleveland, Pomerantz said. A little more than half of known households in Cleveland and just less than 34 percent in East Cleveland have completed the census.
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