Is the Census Bureau inflating participation rates in Florida?

mytwocensus.com ^ | 5/16/2010 | RYAN McCARTHY

[mojitojoe]

It’s safe to say U.S. Census Bureau officials and Monroe County Commissioner Heather Carruthers disagree on just how many Keys residents have been counted for the 2010 tally.

Census officials have been touting return rates as high as 97.5 percent in the Keys, which raised Carruthers’ — and others’ — suspicion. She put out a call on Thursday asking those not counted to contact her office.

That 97.5 percent figure appears to be inflated.

“We have an amazing number of people calling saying they haven’t been counted. Some say their whole neighborhood; some say [a census taker] left a note on their door and never came back,” Carruthers said.

She’d heard enough, and asked Marilyn Stephens, Census Bureau partnership specialist for South Florida, to address the County Commission this Wednesday in Key Largo.

“Maybe this will light a fire under them and they’ll go back out and count some of these,” Carruthers said.

[mojitojoe]

Carruthers has been trumpeting the importance of the census since well before it started on March 22. Return rates in Monroe County during the 2000 census were poor, which affected the amount of state and federal grant dollars the Keys received.

Returns were so poor, in fact, that the Census Bureau implemented a hand enumeration program in the Keys. It hired hundreds of workers from the Keys and South Florida to visit residents door to door. In other areas of the country — and at Keys military bases and on mainland Monroe — people were mailed surveys and asked to fill them out and return them.

[RobRoy]

The census guy came by my place last week. Two things:

1. No joke, if he had one implement on him he would have looked and acted like the identical twin of a character in a movie. That implement is a red Swingline stapler.

2. I made up my racial background out of whole cloth. It is irrelevant.

[Oldexpat]

Just because you didn’t talk to a census worker, or send in a form, doesn’t mean you haven’t been counted. Census workers also submit info from your neighbors if they can’t contact you.
My wife is working for the census. Sometimes they get info from a neighbor and then just submit that along with the name and phone number of the neighbor who supplied the info.
All and all..the system is still prone to infaltion/deflation.

[mojitojoe]

I told them how many people lived here and said we are done. What really p8ssed me off was the fact that they called my house asking about a neighbor. I have an unlisted number, always have, how did they get that number? I also told them I had no intention of giving out any information on anyone so don’t bother to call me again. I asked how they got my unlisted number and she hung up on me. She sounded like some ACORN type, rude, ignorant and snotty.

[Dayman]

I have a hose bib by my front door. If/When the census man comes by I intend to tell him how many people live at the house then ask him to leave. If he doesn’t leave immediatly I will spray him with the hose.