The 2020 Census was supposed to be a simple population count, until it became political.

The concept of the census is simple: Count United States residents every 10 years. Based on those numbers, electoral districts are drawn and hundreds of billions of dollars of federal funding are allocated.

But everything from the format to the questions has become political. In 2018, President Donald Trump began pushing for digitization of the census; his administration attempted to add a question about citizenship. Those proposals drew criticism and lawsuits from advocacy groups that argued such measures would decrease participation from marginalized groups.

Those issues were eventually resolved; the citizenship question was barred by the U.S. Supreme Court and the 2020 Census is more accessible than ever in multiple formats – online, by mail, in person and over the phone in 13 different languages.

Then came the pandemic, which moved the deadline from July 31 to Oct. 31. But in August, the U.S. Census Bureau announced a new, earlier deadline of Sept. 30.

This was upsetting news for Pacific Grove resident Kim Grey, a census enumerator who agreed to speak to the Weekly using an alias because she is not authorized by the Census Bureau to talk to the media.

“I became an enumerator because of the growing concern of my fellow citizens of being turned away at elections,” Grey says. “We all need to have rights as people and the census is a chance for every single person, no matter their socioeconomic status or living situation, to count in the next 10 years.”

For her, it’s not just a job but a sense of national duty. “I think I go a little above and beyond the average enumerator,” she says. Enumerators go to addresses that have not already responded and Grey has taken steps like contacting property managers to ensure every household is counted.

“It’s difficult to count here,” she says, noting factors like rural settings, lack of numbered addresses and an abundance of second homeowners – not to mention general hesitance to open the door to strangers during a pandemic.

According to the Census Bureau, Monterey County as a whole is up just slightly over its 2010 response rate: 65.1 percent as opposed to 64.4 percent a decade ago. While there are pockets of big increases – 81.8 percent of Del Rey Oaks households have responded, up from 69.3 in 2010 – in Carmel-by-the-Sea, only 29.5 percent of households have responded.

On top of that, Grey has been working against a deadline that is constantly changing. On Sept. 24 a federal judge issued an injunction barring the earlier deadline. The federal government announced its intent to appeal that ruling and set a new deadline of Oct. 5, then capitulated and agreed to Oct. 31.

Grey, who was working late on Oct. 2, was relieved to get a text message on her government-issued phone to say she had more time to resolve missing households. “There is already so much of a back and forth to convince people that it’s in their own interest to take the census,” she says. “We’re talking about an entire decade of funding – that’s a childhood.”