7.22.2020 THE 2020 CENSUS Mobile Questionnaire Assistance，MQA

More than 3,000 U.S. Census Bureau staff will begin going into communities with the lowest 2020 Census response rates to encourage and assist people with responding on their own to the 2020 Census. This operation, known as the Mobile Questionnaire Assistance (MQA) program, is a separate activity from census takers going door to door to count households that have not yet responded. MQA is part of the Census Bureau’s final push to encourage people to complete the 2020 Census before the Nonresponse Followup (NRFU) operation begins nationwide on August 11.

MQA representatives will encourage people to respond to the 2020 Census in open, public places in the lowest responding areas of the nation. These are places where people naturally visit when leaving home to help increase self-response rates. People are encouraged to respond on their own online or by phone. Locations for MQAs will include grocery stores and markets, food banks, laundromats, restaurants and grab-and-go eateries, unemployment offices, back to school drives, places of worship, and libraries.

The local census response representatives will help people complete the census on a 2020 Census tablet or on their own device while practicing state and local social distancing protocols. All census workers have been trained in social distancing protocols and issued personal protective equipment (PPE), including masks to be worn during MQA support.

About 62% of households across the country have already responded online, by phone, or by mail since invitations began arriving in mid-March. The Census Bureau is selecting where to provide MQA based on local response rates and conditions.

If people need help responding in a language other than English, Census Bureau staff can provide phone numbers or assistance responding online in 12 other languages. Staff will also have guides available in 59 languages that walk people through how to respond to the English questionnaire.

All staff will carry an ID badge with their name, photograph, a U.S. Department of Commerce watermark seal, and an expiration date. They will have an official Census Bureau-issued bag and tablet. MQA locations will have banners bearing the 2020 Census logo.

In the interest of public health concerns because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Census Bureau staff will decide on a weekly basis whether MQA activities will take place in a low-response area in coordination with local partners.

MQA will be available from July 13 through September 18.   All area census offices across the country are scheduled to begin follow-up work on August 11. All offices will conclude work no later than October 31. Montgomery County currently has a Census self-response rate of 72%, which is 1.5% behind Fredrick County who is in 4th place in the State and is 10% above the national average of 62%. While this is generally good news, this means more than 1 in 4 households in Montgomery County have not responded to the Census which could mean the county could lose 4.6 billion dollars in federal and state funds over the next 10 years for hospitals, schools, and social services.

We are going into a full-court press to the next phase of our outreach campaign to encourage 250,000+ people who live in Montgomery County to respond before August 11 – which is when follow-up from the Census Bureau to households who have not yet responded will start (known as enumeration). Enumeration will actually start a little sooner than that in rural areas across the nation and therefore there is an urgent need to encourage our communities to respond to the census online or via phone before August 11. After this date, they will require follow-up which could mean door-knocking or phone calls from the Census. And, since our traditionally undercounted communities overlap with COVID target communities, we will continue to tie COVID outreach with Census – prioritizing food access and rental/housing assistance because these are our highest call volume.

We need your help to ensure that everyone who lives in Montgomery County gets counted by August 11. Complete your Census before August 11 to help your community gets the funds it needs for hospitals, schools, and social services. After August 11, the Census Bureau will follow-up with households who have not responded.