Counting the Hard Way

We are an elusive people, Vineyarders. We live down unmarked dirt roads where we do not receive mail. Global positioning services are not much use across much of our Island. Some live here seasonally. We guard our privacy.

So we are presenting a not unexpected challenge to the U.S. Census. This federal government exercise is undertaken every ten years simply to count the people in America. From those numbers, the government apportions representatives in Congress — making sure each voice is heard — and distributes more than four hundred billion dollars of our taxes, via Washington, back to us in the form of local aid to schools, roads, and many other programs.

Already Islanders are benefitting with jobs at the tailend of the off-season, in a very off economy, just when the savings from last summer’s efforts were well depleted. Hiring is continuing, though the count is theoretically for a date already past. Those foot soldiers for the census are making decent money and discovering more about our community in the best way — by walking and talking.

With our track record of not returning the forms, federal officials decided not to send them to us at all. Every Island household instead will be visited personally, and visited again and again until we are counted, or until someone will verify that we are not here to be counted at this time of year. The work can be challenging — there are reports of census takers being aggressively sent away by seeming squatters. In other cases, though their observations clearly show a seasonal home not being used, they cannot complete the form for that house until someone else confirms so on the record, which neighbors and caretakers and landscapers and others are apparently reluctant to do. Some census takers have met residents who have no idea what their street address is, an idea incompatible with the twenty-first century census forms.

In an interactive Google map of participation in this census, Vineyard rates are not available yet, so it remains unclear whether we are substantially different from the national participation rate of less than two-thirds of known Americans. But among some there is political resistance which is hard to rationalize.

The census form itself is one of the shortest in history — ten questions only, including race, gender and age, among other things — and filling it out is required by law. It is about representative democracy. Take ten minutes and make sure the Vineyard counts.