Residents who get mail only through P.O. boxes should get Census forms by hand after May 1

Some residents who get their mail via post office boxes are concerned they won't be counted in the census because they haven't gotten their forms yet, report Adam Young for the Harlan Daily Enterprise in Kentucky and Sandra Baltazar Martinez for the Santa Fe New Mexican. The Census Bureau is not mailing the forms to boxes, so officials say they've hired workers to hand-deliver the questionnaire to the residents.

"It's also possible that in rural areas, Census workers haven't finished dropping off the questionnaires,"  Verónica Reyes, New Mexico's Census media specialist, told Martinez. The Census also has an "Update/Leave" campaign scheduled to run until today, where workers will drop off the forms in rural areas and in places where housing units do not have a city-style address.

Reyes also said residents should wait until April 12 to receive the form, or they can call and request the form or stop by a Census center to pick one up. As of April 19, however, the Census will start compiling a list of addresses from where forms have not been received. These people should expect a Census worker to arrive at their home.  (Read more)  But that should not happen before May 1, so if someone claims to be a census taker befiore that day, “I’d say they’re probably not from the census,” Linda Chambers, manager of the Better Business Bureau in Bowling Green, Ky., told the Daily News.

In southeastern Kentucky, "Bell County is one of those areas where the number of people who receive their mail by post office boxes is unusually high," Young reports from the region's largest town, Middlesboro. "As a result, thousands of people could go uncounted." (Read more)