Be Heard: Voting and the Census - 10 for 10 Challenge for Teens and Adults
I’ve written a few articles on how voting is your voice, but another way you are “heard” and have a voice in decisions that impact your life is by completing the census and challenging others to do the same. It’s extremely important and something that every person in the US, citizen or not, and regardless of immigration status, needs to take 10 minutes to do because it will literally impact your life for the next 10 years! Every 10 years the US conducts a census where everyone residing in the US, regardless of citizenship or status, is counted, to determine how and where hundreds of billions of Federal dollars (yes, billions!) are spent each year for the next 10 years. That includes how much money your children’s school will get for educational support. So, what you and your neighbors do or don’t do in completing the census this year will impact the next 10 years.
If you don’t think you should complete the census, think about this. Census results affect planning and funding for many things related to education—including programs such as Head Start, Pell Grants, school lunches, rural education, adult education, teachers' support, and grants for preschool special education. The results also impact planning and funding for healthcare, including funding for hospitals, Medicaid, Medicare Part B, State Children's health programs, housing assistance for older adults and to prevent child abuse. If you are commuting to work or school, remember that the census plays a part in highway planning and construction, as well as grants for buses, subways, and other public transit systems, so your commute could be impacted by what you do or don’t do.
The census also impacts help for communities responding to natural disasters, for fire and rescue and public health. The data impacts programs to support rural areas, to prevent child abuse and to restore wildlife.
Your neighbors and community benefit most when everyone is counted, so please take the time to complete the census. When you respond to the census, you help your community get its fair share of the more than $675 billion per year in federal funds and you also impact how the community is represented in the US Congress.
The list of reasons and programs impacted goes on, so please go to this site, and complete your census and get all your questions answered. You should also know that the census is offered in 13 languages, so please encourage all your friends and neighbors to participate. Language support can be found here.
If you haven’t completed the census, please don’t delay in taking action, because you only have until the end of October. Then you wait 10 years to do it again!
But there’s more—I challenge each adult and teen to get 10 other households to complete the census as well. Get on social media and encourage your friends, relatives and neighbors to complete the census for their household. Anyone 15 years or older can complete the document for their family, so teens, get working on your census and getting others to join. Here is a link to the Census challenge. Let’s see who can get the most families to complete this! For our own challenge, for anyone who gets 10 families to complete the census, just have your parent let us know and we’ll give the first 10 who complete this challenge a $10 gift certificate to Amazon.
While you’re at it, let’s help our neighbors register to vote as well. In addition to the census, in previous articles I’ve written about voting and how voting is your voice in a democracy. It’s also a sacred right and the United Methodist Church calls the right to vote a basic human right. You can help your neighbors exercise their right by being sure they are registered to vote, or to register them if they aren’t already registered at their current address. Getting them registered isn’t difficult and could help empower them to participate in our democracy.
Who will join me in trying to get 10 unregistered voters registered? While we cannot give anyone any enticement or favor for registering to vote, if you can get 10 people to register to vote we’ll give a $10 gift certificate to the first 10 people who give us confirmation. Any citizen who turns 18 before November 3 can be registered to vote…. Can you identify a neighborhood, apartment building, or community that has unregistered voters? If so, let me know and I’ll set up a time to get them registered, or help you get trained to do it yourself. You could empower your friends and neighbors to have a voice, to exercise their sacred right, their human right, to vote.
