U.S. Census omits Dexter mother, son

DEXTER – Viola Hewes has lived in the Dexter area for most of her life and has voted in every election, so when the 85-year-old woman wasn’t contacted this year by the U.S. Census 2000, she became puzzled.

“It’s just as if I didn’t exist,” she said Monday, during a telephone interview from her Upper Garland Road home.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Hewes said the census also did not contact her son, Leon Hewes, who lives next door to her. No Census official stopped at their homes to conduct interviews with them nor did they receive any official document in the mail, she said.

“It puzzled me because I know they even count illegal aliens, and my count is just as important as some of them,” Hewes said.

Josephine Beals, a clerk at the Boston Office of the U.S. Census Bureau said Monday that she was unsure why Hewes and her son were missed by enumerators and the bureau’s mailings.

“We can’t put a finger on why they weren’t contacted,” she said. Beals said the bureau tries hard to make sure everyone is counted, but mistakes occur. She offered to send forms to both Dexter residents so they may be counted.

Mark Tolbert, a spokesman in the U.S. Public Information Office in Washington, D.C., said enumerators make six attempts to contact the head of the households selected for face-to-face interviews. This includes three stops at the designated home, he said. And the mailings are made to every household.

But the Hewes apparently fell through the cracks.

Hewes wonders how accurate the census can be when it missed two people living side-by-side in a small rural community. She said she didn’t know of any other residents along her road who also may have been missed.

The Dexter resident said she called the Dexter town office and told officials that she hadn’t been contacted, and they provided her with a telephone number. That number, which had a recording, said the census was over, she said.

Numerous census officials contacted Monday refused to speculate on how many people or households may have been missed in Maine.

These oversights are one of the reasons the federal government has an accuracy and coverage system in place, according to Raj Singh, mathematical statistician at U.S. Census headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation of the U.S. Census Bureau is a nationwide sample survey to determine the number of people and housing units missed or counted more than once in the census. This evaluation is conducted independently of other census activities and is managed by a different staff, according to Singh.

The federal official said that random sampling began in each state once the census was completed. A few states have yet to be completed. Singh said the sampling looks at clusters of individuals, from minorities to senior citizens to those in a specific area in a community, he said.

According to Singh, 94 clusters of individuals in Maine were contacted a second time by the census to verify the information received during the initial census visit. He declined to identify where the clusters were located.

Singh said the information received during the sampling will be matched to the information obtained during the first visit, and these results will be released by the end of February.

The questionnaires to be filled out soon by those who were missed, like Hewes and her son, will be tabulated and included in the census count, according to Beals.

Hewes said she was pleased to learn that the U.S. Census will be forwarding a questionnaire to her and her son for their participation.

“I’m glad I’m still considered a citizen,” she said.