Baptiste said the Constitution requires the federal government to make an actual count of every person in the United States every 10 years — even the homeless, prisoners and illegal aliens. The primary purpose is to divvy up the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives based on population, a process that gave Georgia two seats after the 2000 census.
The data is also used in sorting out more than $300 billion in federal aid each year, too, as well as determining the boundaries for every state legislative and local government district, Baptiste said, speaking at the Gordon County Chamber of Commerce’s June Booster Breakfast.
"This is a call to action for your commuity and our country," she said.
Latinos groups want a complete count to assure their growing presence translates into political and economic power, according to Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials.
Immigrants continue to come to Georgia, despite policies to discourage illegal immigrants, Gonzalez said, and their influence will grow.
"That is a significant growth and a significant pull that all candidates should pay attention to," he said. "And this notion of immigrant bashing is outdated and has been unsuccessful in other parts of the country where it has been tried."
The state government spent $1.5 million in 2008 to verify addresses and the boundaries of every city. It forwarded the information Washington, but the current year’s budget makes no mention of the census.
"There is a lot of stuff we can do that doesn’t cost a lot of money," said Chris Schrimpf, spokesman for Gov. Sonny Perdue.
Many other states have created outreach campaigns and plan to collect data samples of their own in case they want to challenge a low official count. Georgia’s committee operated for about a year before the last census, but Schrimpf said no such committee has been put in place this year.
Morris News Service contributed to this report.
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