On May 1, the first of about 635,000 temporary census takers will fan out across DeKalb County and America to begin conducting personal interviews with residents who did not return their census forms.

The U.S. Census Bureau says that roughly 48 million households did not send back a completed census form in the mail or did not receive a form at their homes.

On April 27, when the 2010 Census by Mail ended, the national participation rate in the 2010 Census was 72 percent.

DeKalb lagged the nation with a return rate of 68 percent. In the 2000 Census, DeKalb’s return rate was 75 percent.

Census takers will now go door to door to obtain census responses in person and the census officials are urging residents to open their doors to census takers.