Almost a third of households in Illinois still haven’t answered the 2020 census. Ellisa (eh-LEE-suh) Johnson with the Census Bureau says there are a lot of people to count with only a month to go. The count ends on September 30th.

People have a variety of reasons for not answering the census. Some people don’t speak the language on the census forms they get, some put the forms down and forget to go back to them later, and some don’t trust the government. Undercounts can reduce representation in government, grant money that goes to communities, and countless policy decisions that are partly affected by how many people live in one place or another.