The Alabama census supervisor told workers to falsify household data in order to inspect as many houses as possible, according to text messages received by the Associated Press.
The supervisor allegedly wanted census workers to carry out the cases without asking households. According to reports, if two attempts failed with one member of the household and two unsuccessful attempts to hear the owner or neighbors, the census staff had to resign that only one person lived in that residence.
“You need to clarify the matter, which indicates that 1 is busy,” reads the text of the census supervisor of the Dothan Plain in the Great Plain, the AP reported.
An enumerator who traveled from Florida to Alabama to help catch up with the census census shared the texts with the AP and said he would not comply with the orders because he thought he would falsify data if he did. The enumerator requested anonymity and did not provide the full name of the supervisor who posted the instructions.
In photos sent to census workers, the inspector allegedly handed out handwritten 15-step instructions on how to mark a place of residence as just one person and advised them to do so two to three hours after visiting the address to avoid higher-level suspicion. . businesses that can track census workers through iPhones issued by the office.
Michael Cook, a census spokesman for the Census Bureau, said the agency was investigating the Alabama case, saying “We take counterfeiting charges very seriously.” According to Cook, data problems can be addressed by reviewing households and improving accuracy.
The 2020 census was due to end about two weeks earlier this year after the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration. According to the AP, dozens of census workers approached the news agency to share unjustifiably rushing bills to meet deadlines.
In October, advocacy groups and local governments filed a lawsuit for forcing census workers to falsify data to claim they reached 99.9 percent of households.
Alternative methods of counting, including the use of IRS records, interviews with landlords and neighbors, and querying headcount without gender, age, and race data, are believed to have filled the information gap.
