If you get your mail through a post office box and not at home, there is a reason. The Census Bureau does not mail questionnaires to P.O. boxes.

U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said, “The census is all about counting people where they live and sleep, so we must tie each form to a physical location. P.O. boxes are not tied to specific housing units, so we can’t use them to send the forms to specific housing units.”

To ensure that everyone in the country gets counted, U.S. Census staff will employ a technique called “Update/Leave.” If the bureau can’t deliver a form to a physical address by mail, they will deliver one or interview the resident in person.

“This makes about the same amount of sense most government programs do,” several business owners stated. Most of the people who rent U.S. postal boxes work for a living. They will be gone from early until late, and there is some doubt that citizens will welcome Census workers after dark to fill out forms. According to the census people, if your form isn’t received and recorded by the U.S. Census before April 12, your residence will be added to a list of addresses destined to get a visit from a Census worker.

At a recent meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, it was noted that approximately 53 percent of Miller County residents had returned their census forms. A good percent of the remaining 47 percent get their mail at the U.S. Post Office.

As a number of citizens have stated recently, they have not received a census questionnaire and will not since they receive their mail in their P.O. box. Maybe that is a way to get ACORN started back to counting. They seem to have a way of coming up with the numbers the present government likes.