WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas — Williamson County Commissioners are looking to April 2021 when the 2020 U.S. Census data is released, putting plans in place now to prepare for redistricting efforts. At its meeting this week, the commissioners voted at the direction of County Judge Bill Gravell to form a new committee tasked with how to proceed with the project.
An increase of 203,000 people living in the county is anticipated over the count from the 2010 U.S. Census, which was 422,000 residents. That would put the count at 625,000 living in Williamson County.
Commissioners Cynthia Long of Precinct 2, Valerie Covey of Precinct 3, and George Strebel from Wilco’s Graphical Information Systems are assigned to the committee. Covey will serve as chairperson. Schools and cities will have to conduct their own redistricting processes, as the county is only responsible for its four precinct levels.
The 2020 U.S. Census count began when households received information in the mail this past March. Counts were to be as of the date of April 1, 2020. Temporarily hired census workers then made visits to homes throughout the area to ensure as full a count as possible. Response rates in Texas to the questionnaire was 99.9 percent, and of those enumerated numbers 37.1 percent were obtained in follow-up visits, and 62.8 percent were self-reported.
The U.S. Census Bureau has been counting the country’s population since 1790, for a total of 230 years. There were just 13 states in the union when the first census count was done. The 2020 Census includes the 50 states, and five territories: Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The first census count was done with 650 riders on horseback and on foot, written on parchment made of animal skins. Thomas Jefferson was Secretary of State for the first census count. There were just 65 representatives in the U.S. Congress at that time, while now the U.S. Congress has 435 representatives. The 1790 count showed that 109,826 people lived in the five largest cities at the time, which is the amount of people that Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Michigan can hold at capacity. Just 3,929,214 people lived in the U.S. in 1790.
Census numbers provide information to lawmakers, business owners, teachers and others to calculate needed services, products and the number of seats each state will have in the U.S. House of Representatives. Taking a census count is constitutional law, noted in Article 1, Section 2.