Edit those census forms, some cities tell their residents - But geocoding will tell processing machines where a person lives even if mailing address has wrong city, Census Bureau says.

Shane Anthony
March 17, 2010

Some local city officials are encouraging residents to edit incorrect city names on census forms before returning them.

U.S. Census Bureau officials say their counts don't depend on postal mailing addresses. As long as the form's house number and street address are correct, a bar code at the top should pinpoint the recipient's location. City officials, though, say they don't want to take any chances with federal dollars on the line.

"We will stay on this and make sure the census gets it right," said Lisa Bedian, a spokeswoman for the city of St. Peters .

Website notices in Fairview Heights , St. Peters and O'Fallon, Mo. , encourage residents to edit city names before returning the forms. Tim Davidson, a spokesman for the city of Hazelwood , said Mayor Matthew G. Robinson intended to send a letter to allay fears about returning the forms and to tell residents to correct the city name if it's wrong. Davidson said the city had annexed several areas in St. Louis County that had Florissant or Ferguson ZIP codes.

Dennis Johnson, a spokesman for the U.S. Census Bureau in Kansas City , said the city name on mailing addresses wouldn't affect where a resident was counted. Geocoding on the forms will tell processing machines where a person lives, and the bureau has worked with municipal and county governments across the country to make sure the coding is accurate.

"I can assure you, based on physical location, they will be attributed to the correct address," Johnson said.

The machines won't notice scratched-out city names, Johnson said. He said census workers could see the handwritten edits when they reviewed forms.

Fairview Heights ' website asks residents to edit the city name but warns them not to scratch through the bar coded area.

In St. Charles County , residents in large swaths of St. Peters and O'Fallon have received forms with "Cottleville" typed in the address line. O'Fallon spokesman Tom Drabelle said geographic information system technicians would track census data to check its accuracy.

"We will make sure that everyone in O'Fallon is counted in O'Fallon one way or another," he said.