Have you returned your U.S. Census Form (or questionnaire or whatever you want to call it) yet? You should.
On the other hand, as Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” jokingly suggested last week — if we all refuse or fail to return our Census Forms, we’ll create a ton of temporary jobs for Census workers. Maybe??
We got the form in the earliest mailing, some time last month, and my wife filled it out and we mailed it in the very next morning. Good citizens, I thought, metaphorically patting myself on the back.
Last Thursday, we received our Census Form in the mail — for the second time?????
After looking it over carefully, my wife discovered a short paragraph in the middle of a small sheet included with the form telling us that, if we’d already mailed in our Census Form, please not to mail in this one.
WHAT????????? WHAT????????????? WHAT????????????
Just for grins, I called a toll-free support number for the Census located somewhere (I forget where?) on the Census Form. Or maybe I found the number online?
Anyway, after punching “0″ repeatedly on my phone pad, or maybe there was an automated voice-activated option, I forget — I got through to a real, live person. I believe her name was “Debbie.”
I told Debbie about the duplicated form, and her response was something very close to: “Yes, we’ve been getting a lot of calls about that second mailing. But if you’ve already filled out the form, just ignore the second one.”
Now I have heard nothing the last six months or more about the Census any more than this: “Please send in your forms. We need that information. And by returning your form promptly, you’ll save the Census Bureau over $1 Billion.”
So I asked Debbie — “Isn’t it rather confusing AND expensive to send out a second Census Form mailing??” (I always speak with double or triple question marks when I’m especially angered and/or confounded.)
“Oh,” Debbie explained, “by sending out that second mailing we expect to save more than a $1 Billion.”
So, faithful readers, what have we learned today?
1. Everything related to the Census appears to be counted in $1 Billion increments.
2. If you consider a margin of error of maybe one or two percent — you can BET maybe MILLIONS of people will complete the Census Form and mail it in at least TWICE — making any accurate Census Count of the U.S. (See the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, I believe it is.) simply a joke.
Ah, well. Maybe I’m being too pessimistic. Maybe after a ton of ad money spent on television and radio propaganda, enough people really do understand what’s going on and really will return their forms — once. Or, maybe not.