Local residents who haven’t logged on to fill out the 2020 Census yet should do so today and help increase Polk County’s response rate, and ensure that everyone is being counted correctly.

The national self-response rate stood at 61.6% of the country so far have filled out the Census, with Minnesota leading everyone in the United States with a 71.1% rate. Georgia is behind the rest of the nation with a 57.5% response rate, much of that being completed online at 46.1%.

Polk County’s rate for self-response stood at 46.7% of people locally, with only 29.5% of local residents who have filled out the questionnaire online. That’s well behind the final 2010 rate of 62.1% of people who filled out the census a decade ago.

Every county surrounding Polk is ahead in responses to the census currently, with Haralson sitting at a 60.4% rate, Paulding at 67.3%, Bartow at 61.9%, and Floyd County at 59.3%. Cherokee County across the state line in Alabama is 43.6% and Cleburne County stood at 55.9%

To say the least, Polk County has catching up to do.

The census is important, not just because it determines what number of congressional districts will be in Georgia once everyone is counted. It also determines a whole range of Federal, State and Local funding issues, helps leaders plan for future projects, and many, many more issues than can be discussed in one single story.

Because I think I can let the Census Bureau folks do a better job explaining all this in a short amount of time, here’s a video: