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Census Workers Start Knocking On Doors In Local Area
May 1, 2010
About 635,000 2010 Census takers across the nation began going door to door Saturday to follow up with households that either didn’t mail back their form or didn’t receive one. An estimated 48 million addresses will be visited through July 10.
In Escambia County, 72 percent of residents returned their census forms by mail. In Santa Rosa County, 76 percent were returned, while in Escambia County (Ala.) 68 percent of forms were mailed back.
If a 2010 Census worker knocks on your door, here are some ways to verify that person is a legitimate census taker:
- The census taker must present an ID badge that contains a Department of Commerce watermark and expiration date. The census taker may also be carrying a black canvass bag with a Census Bureau logo.
- The census taker will provide you with supervisor contact information and/or the local census office phone number for verification, if asked.
- The census taker will only ask you the questions that appear on the 2010 Census form.
The 2010 Census taker will not ask for social security number, bank account number or credit card number and will never solicit for donations or contact you by e-mail.
In most cases, census workers will make up to six attempts at each housing unit address to count possible residents. This includes leaving notifications of the attempted visit at the house or apartment door, in addition to trying to reach the household by phone to conduct the interview or schedule an in-person interview.
“If a census taker knocks on your door, please help by providing the basic information required for the census,” Groves said. “Your answers are strictly confidential. There are just 10 questions on the form and it should only take about 10 minutes to complete.”
Census takers will go to great lengths to ensure that no one is missed in the census. After exhausting their efforts to do an in-person interview with a resident of an occupied housing unit, they will seek out proxy sources — a neighbor, a rental agent, a building manager or some other knowledgeable person familiar with the housing unit — to obtain as much basic information about the occupants as they can.
Some households will receive a visit even though they may have mailed back their form. If the form arrived too late to be processed before non-response follow-up packets were sent to one of the 494 local census offices, the household occupants must still be interviewed when the census taker arrives. The Census Bureau is urging cooperation and patience with the census takers, as this is the best way to ensure that everyone is counted properly.
Households that didn’t receive a form by mail, including those that pick up their mail from post office boxes, will be visited by census workers as part of the follow-up plan. The Census Bureau doesn’t mail forms to post office boxes because responses must be associated with a specific residence location, not the post office box location.
The Census Bureau has stringent systems in place to ensure that people can feel safe when they open their door to a census taker. All census takers undergo an FBI background check that includes both name and fingerprint checks. All have taken an oath for life to protect the information they collect and understand that they face stiff penalties, jail time or both for any disclosure of personally identifiable information.
Comments
5 Responses to “Census Workers Start Knocking On Doors In Local Area”
We recieved 2 Censuses however we only returned one but did n’tsil it until the last week of April. Do we just tell the census taker that if they come?
That’s the problem. People don’t think or when they do it is about themselves!! Micheal, I didn’t know the government decisions were made in NYC. I always heard it was in DC.
It also determines how much money we get for our schools.
In other words for our children in our community for their education.
What in the world are you thinking?
Wondering why your area still has dirt roads and no street lights while the rest of the county is receiving state money for construction, fire & police services?
A lot of that stuff is determined by the Census. The Census determines how many House Of Representative Members go to Congress to represent our area.
When our representation is smaller, the folks up in NYC can dictate how much money we get for our highways, what type of federal and state resources we get for law enforcement, our soon to be much needed oil cleanup dollars and any number of things based on our population.
NOT filling out the Census is like not voting in national & local elections and then complaining when they start doing something you don’t like . . . . STUPID!
I don’t answer my front door. I don;’t now if you can even open it. My friends go the back. Insurance salesmen, meat salemen and census workers can knock until they blue in the face for all I care at the front door.