Surviving the Census
Urbanna, Va.— In 1970 I helped take the census in the Gloucester County area. My territory was part of the rim of the southwest branch of the Severn River and I was the sole census taker in that area. No census forms were sent in the mail because of the high number of rural P.O. box holders. The forms were held solely in my control, and I went door-to-door to make my count. There were no duplicates in my returns.
So I know from firsthand experience what a tough job taking the census is and census takers have my sympathy. How well they do really relies on the overall census plan. Because of my previous experience taking the census, some obvious mistakes in the 2010 plan were easy to spot.
One mistake with the coming census is that it was heavily advertised on TV and in other media that the forms were arriving in the mail around April 17. My form never came. At the end of that week, I asked the helpful Urbanna Postmaster where my census form was. I was told they had arrived for Urbanna residents but with “incomplete addresses” (they had been sent to “box holder”), and were thus “undeliverable.” The forms had to be returned to the U.S. Census Bureau. That the Census Bureau did not think of this problem before the mass mailings was mistake number two.
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| by Mary Wakefield Buxton |
I immediately drove to the office of the motel at Topping to pick up my form because I wanted to save the government money. By doing so, I would not require a door-to-door visit, a needless expense, nor would I be bothered with someone knocking at my door.
At the front door at the census office was a box of census forms and a census person pointed to it and told me to help myself. I could have taken any number of forms. This lack of tight control of census forms was another mistake.
Nonetheless, I filled out my form and mailed it using the enclosed government self-addressed envelope. That was in April. I had done my duty and was done with the U.S. Census.
Or so I thought. In May, a census taker began canvassing door-to-door in Urbanna. When she got to my house I explained I had already filled in my form and returned it. “I know that, I already have your records,” she said. She then asked information about several neighbors, explaining that she wasn’t able to reach them. I politely declined to answer any questions. Interviewing neighbors is not the way to gather census information.
I thought that surely was the end of the census for me. But on June 1, I found a note on the door from a new census taker, this time a man. It indicated I needed to fill out my census form. What? What? One census taker assuring me she had my records and now another census taker wanting me to fill out another census form, which pointed to another mistake—the use of multiple census takers in one area is a no-no. One hand does not know what the other has done.
The new census taker returned that afternoon and when he asked me to fill out my census form, I decided I must be on Candid Camera and at any moment someone with a TV camera would jump out of a bush and shout “Smile!” I explained to the man that I had already sent in my form.
Regardless, he urged me to fill out a second form—another really serious mistake. Please, only one form per household should be collected by the census. When he persisted, I sent him to my husband’s office.
It’s not easy to count every American and citizens should do all they can to help make the process as easy and as inexpensive as possible. But Americans have the right to expect efficient, well-trained and competent census takers and to fill out a form only once.
How many others may have experienced the difficulties that I did over this year’s census I cannot begin to guess. But if what I witnessed with my census was multiplied many times over across the nation, the 2010 census delivered a great deal of waste in time, energy and money. We can only hope, when the final numbers are cast, at least the numbers will be correct.
http://www.marywakefieldbuxton.com
