I filled out the Census! Did you?

MikeSun5 said:
If that's all the information the Census Bureau needs, they could have saved millions of dollars by just having the local DMV send them an email.
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I have no idea why it's 6 times, but since every question I have have investigated, from the letter before the census, to the advertising budget, has shown to be well thought out and calculated for efficiency, I have no reason to think the plan is arbitrary. Considering the attention paid to every other facet, I would be fairly surprised if they hadn't previously recorded response rates correlated to number of visits, and if 6th visits really yielded no results, I doubt they would be continued.

A lot of people don't work 9-5 M-F. I personally don't know anyone who does, so catching them at home on a day and time when they can be reached can be difficult if they haven't recorded a phone number.

As for sending them an email, How did they get the email address?
 
Mr.D said:
bokonon said:
One person, one vote, no poll tax or other barrier to exercising the right to vote.
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How does the census put up a barrier to vote?
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It doesn't. I was answering the question how one assures that everyone is represented, and when I said "other barriers" I had in mind things like literacy tests and other shenanigans traditionally used to prevent people from exercising their right to vote.
 
Cavemonster said:
As for sending them an email, How did they get the email address?
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:confused: If the Census Bureau can find my home address as well as some cabin in the woods, they can find a stupid address for the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles. I can get that email address in a 5 second search.

...anyway, my dad always said you shouldn't complain about something unless you've thought of at least one solution first. The email idea was simply that solution allowing me to complain. :) Maybe not the best idea, but when I receive two notifications and 4 (yes, four) identical census forms in the mail, just to find out that they only need information from me that is readily available from numerous other branches of government, I find that wasteful.
 
Mr.D said:
Which is the perfect way to ensure minorities (of "race," religion, sexual orientation, wealth or whatever) are under-represented in a representative democracy.
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It's far from perfect, even if the only minorities one wishes to represent are racial minorities. Since there were no census questions addressing minorities of wealth, religion, or sexual orientation, I guess the Census Bureau finds those minorities less deserving of their patronage.

Mr.D said:
Using "racial" demographics as a part of creating voting districts is one attempt at a solution to a voting system that tends to devalue minority voters. There _is_ an implicit assumption that people of the same "race" share similar culture, values and opinions on their government.
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I reject the implicit assumption as racist and incorrect.

Real people in the real world have a variety of opinions on a variety of issues. Some of the issues are very important to them, and some are less important. For many, the weighted sums of issues and the platitudes of candidates don't provide enough impetus to enter a polling booth.

Even if the world were strictly black and white, and there was a clear racial position on every issue, gerrymandering precinct boundaries to insure that minority-representing candidates (whoever they are) are proportionally present in legislatures would simply mean that the "majority-representing" legislators would outvote the "minority-representing" legislators on every issue every time.

And the world never did split so cleanly anyway. It's time to stop pretending it does.
 
MikeSun5 said:
:confused: If the Census Bureau can find my home address as well as some cabin in the woods, they can find a stupid address for the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles. I can get that email address in a 5 second search.
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Really, you can get email addresses from home addresses only in 5 seconds?
How?

MikeSun5 said:
...anyway, my dad always said you shouldn't complain about something unless you've thought of at least one solution first. The email idea was simply that solution allowing me to complain. :) Maybe not the best idea, but when I receive two notifications and 4 (yes, four) identical census forms in the mail, just to find out that they only need information from me that is readily available from numerous other branches of government, I find that wasteful.
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I can't think of a much cheaper way to get information than a mailing. That you got 4 is atypical. Most houses got one preliminary warning, one form, and one reminder with a form. Since even a tiny increase in response percentage saves a huge amount of money, that's a reasonable investment.

If you're so annoyed at *gasp* receiving 4 envelopes that it's even worth mentioning, then the rest of your life must be pretty nice.
 
MikeSun5 said:
If it did happen, that wasn't the Census Bureau, dude. That was probably just Steve Martin and Michael Caine trying to get your money.

....
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It happened, dude. It was the Census Bureau out of KC MO.

I don't know why that's so hard to believe.

It's not like I made an extraordinary claim, dude.
 
Here we go. I dug-out the business cards the Census people jammed in my door.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
U.S. Census Bureau
1211 North 8th Street
Kansas City, KS 66101-2129

JANIS FOX
Senior Field Representative
Phone: 515-289-2681
Cell: 515-556-0802
Office: 800-728-4748


----and-----

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
U.S. Census Bureau
1211 North 8th Street
Kansas City, KS 66101-2129

Bill Borland
Field Representative
Phone: 515-331-3992
Cell: 515-210-9455
Office: 800-728-4748


So It was the Kansas City Kansas office. I made a common mistake about the state.

If you think I made this stuff up, call those numbers. Ask for those people.
 
Cavemonster said:
Really, you can get email addresses from home addresses only in 5 seconds?
How?
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I don't think you understood me. Reread the post. I said the information the census asked me (and all the other people in my state) for could have been sent to them by the Florida Dept. of Transportation in a mass email. If that was done, then getting name, age, race, and addresses (which is all the census asks for) would be almost instantaneous, and the only thing the census would have to do is get info from those who don't have licenses. Receipt of the email could be automated, thereby saving hundreds of man-hours and millions of dollars.

If you're so annoyed at *gasp* receiving 4 envelopes that it's even worth mentioning, then the rest of your life must be pretty nice.
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:rolleyes: Okay, now I think you're intentionally not understanding. I said I found that wasteful, not annoying. And yes, my life is pretty nice.

Actually, if your life is so saturated that you don't care that you have heaps of uneccessary junk mail stuffed into your mailbox, I applaud your elevated station in our society. Don't worry, there are plenty of us underlings that can worry about our government's wasteful spending for you. Anyway, it sounds like you have lots of way more important things to do than be the JREF's official "Stuff-Worth-Mentioning" Police, so you'd better get going!
 
RSLancastr said:
My Better Half, Susan, is a hobbyist genealogist, and says that, by refusing/neglecting to fill out the census, people are harming their descendants when, decades/centuries later, those descendants try to research their family tree.
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Valid point, Robert. It's been VERY helpful for my own genealogical research- I found one ancestor who listed his occupation as "gentleman", which I thought was pretty cool. (I believe he had some family money.)
I worked as a Census Crew Supervisor 10 years ago, and in this area it was done entirely door-to-door and face-to-face. Plus every other household got the long form. (My neighbor decided to have some fun and listed her occupation as "pornography writer" and her income as over $500,000 even though she was unemployed. Then she asked me if there would be any "consequences" for lying. I told her data is sealed for 75 years after which her descendants would likely scratch their heads a bit.)
 
Mr.D said:
I did say "one of the duties of a democracy" for a reason.

But since you brought it up; How does one ensure equal representation in congress for all "races" without demographic information?
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Advantaging certain identified minorities or protecting their rights more than others is not a "duty of democracy", it's a disservice to equality. We are all individuals and therefore minorities of one.

I didn't bring up you silly conundrum ! "Equal representation" (and even "proportional representation" which is likely what you meant) doesn't result from any representative democracy. Gerrymandering to improve one inequity invariable creates another and can only improve the lot for geographically co-located groups anyway. Perhaps you should read up on the topic before citing well known problems with representative democracy and expecting answers.
 
stevea said:
Advantaging certain identified minorities or protecting their rights more than others is not a "duty of democracy", it's a disservice to equality. We are all individuals and therefore minorities of one.
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So what is the "duty of a democracy?"

Majority rules period?

(And yes, I'm well aware of gerrymandering and all the problems of how voting districts are actually created. I'm also not so far up on my high horse that I can't see how minority rights are a fundamental part of a "Western style" democracy and why "race" in the census still matters even if we wish it weren't so.)
 
Hamradioguy said:
Valid point, Robert. It's been VERY helpful for my own genealogical research- I found one ancestor who listed his occupation as "gentleman", which I thought was pretty cool. (I believe he had some family money.)
I worked as a Census Crew Supervisor 10 years ago, and in this area it was done entirely door-to-door and face-to-face. Plus every other household got the long form. (My neighbor decided to have some fun and listed her occupation as "pornography writer" and her income as over $500,000 even though she was unemployed. Then she asked me if there would be any "consequences" for lying. I told her data is sealed for 75 years after which her descendants would likely scratch their heads a bit.)
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Actually, I believe it's only 72 years, which is even odder.
 
Hamradioguy said:
Valid point, Robert. It's been VERY helpful for my own genealogical research- I found one ancestor who listed his occupation as "gentleman", which I thought was pretty cool. (I believe he had some family money.)
I worked as a Census Crew Supervisor 10 years ago, and in this area it was done entirely door-to-door and face-to-face. Plus every other household got the long form. (My neighbor decided to have some fun and listed her occupation as "pornography writer" and her income as over $500,000 even though she was unemployed. Then she asked me if there would be any "consequences" for lying. I told her data is sealed for 75 years after which her descendants would likely scratch their heads a bit.)
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My grandfather was the census taker for the 1930 census that included his family's household. It's pretty cool to have a whole page sample written by him, and also to know that the information relating to my family for that year is probably fairly accurate.

The handwriting part won't ever happen again, most likely, though.

LTC8K6 said:
I'll look again in the morning, but I don't think so. The note with each was written on the assumption that the earlier forms had not been sent in, iirc.
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I got that with the "business census" sent out at the beginning of the year. I filled it out online, but then got two more forms saying, "We didn't receive your information, but ignore this letter if we did." I ignored them.
 
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