The Census Project Blog

by Terri Ann Lowenthal

Census fans, excitement is in the air!

Already, “advance letters” from chief census honcho Robert Groves are arriving in mailboxes in rural areas, targeted counties along the Gulf Coast recovering from Hurricane Katrina, and some urban dwellings where direct mail delivery is spotty. Following that “heads up” will be the first wave of “enumerators” (sounds so … math class?) distributing census forms by hand to homes without traditional “city style” addresses or regular mail service. These census takers will verify the location of each housing unit, possibly spotting addresses missed in earlier canvassing, as they carry out the Update/Leave (get it?) operation.

In a similar vein, starting later in March, census workers will visit homes in remote areas, including Indian reservations, confirm the unit’s precise location, and collect census information from the household on the spot (Update/Enumerate operation — get it?).

From March 8 – 10, most households will receive the advance letter, letting them know to expect their census form in the mail about a week later and asking them to mail it back “promptly” (Mail-out/Mail-back operation — duh!). The English-only letter (except for the 13.5 million homes that will get a bilingual English-Spanish form) includes a note in Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Russian, telling recipients to visit the census Web site for help. A few days hence, homes in census tracts where at least 10 percent of households primarily speak a language other than English (one of the five in which census forms are printed) will receive a postcard with instructions on how to request an in-language form, which you can do until April 21.

Later this week, the Census Bureau will activate the Telephone Questionnaire Assistance lines for Census 2010. The primary purpose of these call centers is to answer questions about the census and process requests for in-language forms. The phone lines are also a “last resort” way to respond to the census, for people who are unable to fill out the form and mail it on their own (for example, due to a disability). Keep in mind that, through April 11, people who want to call in their answers must provide the unique code on the census form they received in the mail.

Need help filling out the questionnaire in another language? Assistance guides are available in 59 languages on the 2010 census Web site, or you can call the toll-free help lines to request one. Hearing-impaired individuals can call the TDD line if they have questions. And fearful immigrants don’t have to rely on the Census Bureau; many census advocates are preparing assistance materials in a wide range of languages. (See the Quick Links and Resources for Census Advocates sections of my Census News Briefs.)

Didn’t get a form at your home base? From March 19 – April 19, Be Counted forms in six languages will be available at 40,000 locations around the country. Can’t get one of those? After April 12, call the help line and give your answers over the phone. But remember that the census is first and foremost an address-based operation that is best completed through the major enumeration methods. Be Counted forms and telephone responses are stop-gap ways to participate if all else fails.

To prod historically hard-to-count communities, the Census Bureau will mail about 40 million replacement questionnaires, in two waves in early April, to all addresses in low-response neighborhoods. Additional major operations will count people without a usual residence (Service-based Enumeration, March 29 – 31), people living in group facilities such as college dorms and prisons (Group Quarters Enumeration, March 30 – May 14), and people who are transient, such as migrant workers (Enumeration at Transitory Locations, March 22 – April 16). People experiencing homelessness or who live in a temporary location should wait until these operations are finished before using a Be Counted form or calling the assistance lines if they believe they were still missed.

I hope this quick tutorial on the early major census operations will help census advocates and local officials mobilize their constituents to be counted in the way most appropriate to their circumstances. By understanding the big picture, we can help ensure a more complete count without gumming up the works in a breathtakingly complex national exercise.

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A note to our friends in the census-resistance movement: If you follow the advice of those great patriots, Rep. Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck, and violate the law (13 U.S.C. §221) by only writing in the number of people in your household, guess what? A census taker will come a-callin’, spending my hard-earned tax dollars to follow up with households that decided the law doesn’t apply to them. Go ahead; make a constitutionally mandated effort involving 9,400 activities to manage 44 operations even harder. But don’t even think of complaining about the high cost of the census. At some point, hypocrisy renders “principles” moot.