Southwest Kansas counties record low census response rates

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Census organizers in Kansas plan to ramp up efforts to get people counted, particularly in southwestern counties where response rates are low.

Morton, Stanton, Haskell and Lane counties are showing that 15% to 30% of residents have responded to census forms delivered to their homes. Kansas has a 64.8% self-response rate, on par with most other states.

Many in the counties don't get mail at home, using a P.O. Box, for example, and a planned effort to hand-deliver forms in March was delayed by emergence of coronavirus infections. Census workers resumed the effort in mid-May and ended it last week.

Census data helps determine how much federal funding state and local governments receive.

Dayle Jeanne Lorenson, city clerk of Johnson City in Stanton County, said the city has published newspaper ads, placed posters and included census information on utility bills to boost responses.

“I just want us to be represented correctly and accurately in government,” Lorenson said. “It’s a reflection on who we are.”

La Mexicana, a Spanish-language radio station in Liberal, has hosted conversations on social media discussing the census.

The Kansas Health Foundation, a Wichita-based nonprofit, awarded a grant of about $500,000 to the League of Kansas Municipalities to encourage Kansans to complete the census. The League is now mailing advertising to addresses and P.O. boxes in areas with less than a 40% self-response rate.

The higher the self-response rate, the fewer census-takers the government will have to hire to start knocking on the doors of homes whose residents haven’t yet answered the census questions.

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Andy Tsubasa Field is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.