Send in those census forms

MAT-SU — For the next few months, don’t be alarmed at an uninvited knock at your door.

The 2010 U.S. Census is under way, and government employees are working to count every man, woman and child in the United States.

In the Mat-Su Valley, the Census Bureau is using three methods to get an accurate head count, said Mark Tanguay, director of census operations for Alaska. The 10-question forms are being mailed to every residence with a mailbox or left on the front door of houses without. In more remote areas, census employees are going door-to-door to count inhabitants.

Tanguay said the forms should be mailed back as soon as possible, as the forms have to be sent to the Lower 48 to be counted. Starting on May 1, census employees — about 2,000 statewide — will start knocking on doors of those locations where the forms were not returned.

“In 2000, Alaska had the lowest response rate in the entire country. … It was around 50 percent,” Tanguay said.

Not all of the non-responses are people unwilling to participate, he said. Some of the forms are left at vacation cabins people might not be visiting this time of year and some might have been inadvertently thrown away.

Because there are justifiable reasons some people may not turn the forms in, the penalties for non-responses are rarely pursued, Tanguay said. But there are penalties for people who knowingly refuse to fill the form out or falsify or mislead the count. Additionally, there is an incentive for people to turn in the forms in a timely manner.

“For someone to send the form back, it costs the government 42 cents. If they don’t, it will cost on average $58 per form not turned in,” he said.

The workers who have initially gone door-to-door have said people here are rightfully cautious, Tanguay said. Many people are not used to unannounced visitors, and some have claimed the census workers are trespassing.

However, trespassing is wrongfully crossing onto someone’s land, Tanguay said. The census workers are not committing a wrongful act, as their job is justified in Article 1 Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution.

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.