ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : It’s Foolish to Write Off the Census : Despite the criticism, the ’90 count is on track and will achieve 100% response.

The 1990 Census has listened to an orchestra of criticism lately. In a growing crescendo, critics state that only 64% of the national population has mailed back the questionnaire. As a result, critics proclaim the 1990 Census a failure! Others raise the “right to privacy” banner claiming the “low” return rate is indicative of the desire of a “majority” of Americans to be left alone. Thus, census “sniffs,” “snoops,” and “snouts” are finding no cooperation from this “majority.”

Another chorus sings that the non-respondents represent their particular constituency. One analyst even determined that a dearth of No. 2 pencils spelled death for the census. The critic claimed that a fundamental truth of American life is that no one owns pencils anymore. Therefore, the major cause of the “undercount” is the No. 2 lead pencil.

Despite the criticism, the 1990 Census is on track and will achieve a complete count. Claiming that it is a failure is like pointing at a car halfway down the assembly line and proclaiming the fenders are missing!

In Orange County, for example, the response rate is more than 80%--and climbing. Thousands of enumerators are in the field to retrieve questionnaires. At the end of this operation the Census Bureau will be close to a 100% response rate. Close to 100%, however, is not good enough. Additional operations will be launched to ensure the response rate reaches 100%.

The field follow-up operation has four objectives: Questionnaires that are inconsistent, illegible, or missing data will be corrected; housing units that were reported as vacant or demolished will be rechecked to verify that fact; blank and missing questionnaires will be traced to ensure completion, and any remaining questionnaires that have not been accounted for will be retrieved.

As field follow-up progresses, the “Were You Counted?” campaign will be launched through newspapers and television and radio advertisements to give those who were missed an opportunity to be counted. The forms will be published in newspapers and be available at community centers and public festivals. By the end of summer, the census count will be 100%. But even then, the work of the Census Bureau is not over.

Post-census “Local Review” will be the final local operation. This program gives local government a voice in the census and an opportunity to review the completed housing unit populations and identify discrepancies between local estimates and the census counts at the block level.

The U.S. Constitution requires a census every 10 years to apportion congressional representatives among the states. It is also used to redefine the state’s legislative districts, and census statistics serve as the basis for the distribution of about $37 billion in federal funds annually to the states. Nearly 100 federal grant programs are tied to census statistics. People committed to a “one person, one vote” democracy and those interested in the social well-being of their community, must ensure that they are counted.