By AMY RILEY
One Citizen's Perspective

This past Saturday, I had the rare opportunity of participating in the census for the second time this year.

Mind you, I didn't want to be counted twice, but the census taker simply would not take no for an answer. I knew this was coming because my household received every census-related mailing in duplicate, one with the street number and name, which was accurate, and one with the street number, name, and “Pky,” which was not.

By the time I received the last mailing, which was a reminder to mail in the census form(s), I had the foresight to save both copies for future reference. Alas, I could not produce the copies until after the census taker had departed, but chances are, it would not have made much difference anyway — he was very persuasive. So it was that my family was counted twice. Isn't that cheating? What a silly game, I thought.

You too, you say? Quite possibly so. The gentleman who came knocking at my door gave nary a twitch when I rattled off my highly original retort, “I got two, but I only sent one in.”

It seems he had heard it already just a few times that day, all along my street, and on an adjoining street as well. Realizing that a street address minus the street, lane, way, path, road, parkway, or place is not entirely unheard of these days, I have to wonder just how many of us are being counted twice? And what is the point of playing a game, if you don't play by the rules?

A not so speedy call to the 800 number on the back of the reminder eventually produced a person who was very polite, but very helpless in correcting the problem.

Finally he suggested that I file a formal complaint, which was really nothing more than a typed one-sentence declaration that a call was made to report a problem, and yet he assured me that the problem would be fixed before the 2010 census.

Gee, that's a relief.

“Don't you need to know the address I am referring to?” I asked curiously. “Oh, no ma'am, we don't identify complaints by name or address,” my helpfully helpless friend informed me.

So, let me get this straight. The same government entity which wishes to identify each of us by name and address has no interest in cataloguing our complaints in a similar fashion? The same government entity which wishes to count everyone for purposes of reapportioning congressional seats and ensuring “that all communities get their fair share of government funding” has no problem with counting some of us twice?

The young man on the phone assured me that the statistical program used to analyze census data would ferret out any duplicate responses. Of course this same young man assured me that all addresses were verified against local postal records, and that any discrepancies would be corrected by the postal service.

Would that be via the carrier or the sorter? My duplicate mailings made it right on through without a hitch, all four of them.

Apparently, Fayette County is leading the state with the highest response rate thus far. Duplicate responses notwithstanding, that would be great for us if we were likely to receive our “fair share,” but in the game of Life, the concept of community property (federal taxes paid on our earnings), with the IRS playing banker, dictates that what's ours is theirs and what's ours is theirs.

Or is that Monopoly? Oh, no, Monopoly is what that guy Bill Gates played, the game they used to call Stratego.

To sum things up, remember that in the census game, if you roll doubles, you get to take another turn. It matters not if you prefer the outmoded (and nearly completely soaked) Battleship version or the increasingly popular Candyland edition. Never mind the rules, they change each time the game is played.

Winning or losing isn't important, it's how you play the game that counts.

[Your comments are welcome. E-mail to ARileyFreePress@aol.com.]

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