The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the U.S. Census Bureau to delay their door-to-door tactics in getting every citizen counted in the 2020 census, which makes self-responding more important than ever through the internet or phone.

Guthrie County is a little behind the curve so far in getting responses, with a current rate of 53.2 percent of residents responding, and 38.7 percent of those responses have been through the internet. Their total is less than all the counties surrounding it, and in the 2010 census the final tally of self-responses for the County was 65.9 percent. Gary Krob is the State of Iowa Data Center Coordinator and serves on the 2020 Census Complete Count Committee. He shares why residents should take a few minutes now to complete their census form, “The more people that can respond either by phone or on the internet the less amount of work and money that the Census Bureau will have to then put into knocking on doors later in the year. So if you get the postcard in the mail and you can just jump online fill it out it’ll save the nation a lot of time and a lot of money and it really doesn’t take that long to fill out.”

Krob reminds residents of the many factors the census contributes to in our daily lives, such as determining the number of seats Iowa has in the House of Representatives, drawing congressional and state legislative districts, and informing federal funding of hundreds of billions of dollars including school lunch programs, highway construction, and education. For a link to complete your census form, visit here.