The census campaign wants to encourage people to be counted in the 2020 census, officials from the state of Michigan say it will take less than 10 minutes to complete once residents start getting invitations on March 12.
Officials said the census is important because undercounting will mean communities get less federal funding for education, health care and other important programs. They especially want to target more than 1.8 million of the state's 10 million people who are hard to count — those areas with high poverty, low access to Internet, and immigrants and people of color.
Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist said during a news conference at the Capitol that the census really is a 10-minute process. The forms are simple, but they are so important. Their magnitude cannot be understated.
This is the first once-a-decade census in which most people will be encouraged to answer questions via the internet. They also can be counted by phone or mail.
Later in the process, census workers will knock on the doors of homes that have not responded.