Las Vegas Weekly

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We’ve been getting quite a bit of response to last week’s item about how there won’t really be fines for people who don’t complete the census. One guy called to say he hadn’t opened his yet, but was reluctant to do so because he received one last year with dozens of questions. I explained he had actually received the American Community Survey, a long form with more than 50 questions that’s sent out to only 250,000 households across the country, and that this was much shorter (what I really wanted to tell him was that he could have filled out the census in the time it took us to have that conversation). And a sweet old lady, Betty, called to tell us she didn’t receive hers in the mail, which she found odd since she used to work as a census taker. “You wouldn’t believe some of the characters I encountered,” she said, sharing an anecdote to which, bless her heart, she imparted a meaning she didn’t intend: “This one guy came to the door naked, and he had the long form.”