A census supervisor in Alabama sent text messages to census takers instructing them to use fake data for households they were not able to get in touch with, marking down that such homes were occupied by a single resident despite not knowing how many people actually resided in the home, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
According to the report, the purpose of using the false data was part of an effort to “check off as many households as possible” before the deadline regardless of whether census workers were able to interview occupants in homes that failed to return questionnaires through the mail.
The texts—which reportedly had an “urgent tone”—came as the Trump administration was engaged in ongoing litigation to end the process early and enforce a presidential order to exclude undocumented immigrants from the apportionment data used to allocate congressional seats and distribute federal funds.
Hellbound and Down 