5 Comments

1. Michael DiSanto April 12th, 2010 at 7:59 pm

   it sat on the table for almost a week. I finally filled it out for myself and my roommates in about 10 minutes, using facebook to look up their birth years. Mailed it out and got another copy of it a few days later on account of my tardiness.

2. ricmac01 April 13th, 2010 at 11:20 am

   I filled mine out and mailed it promptly but I also received an extra form about 10 days later. Somebody is wasting money.

3. Natalie April 13th, 2010 at 1:38 pm

   We got randomly selected in December to fill out an extended version of the census, asking us about our income, etc. So now the gov can count our extremely broke asses living in Bushwick here. On top of that we also got sent 2 regular census forms, even after i sent the first one in promptly. a lot of paper.

4. Michael DiSanto April 15th, 2010 at 10:33 am

   well they’ve certainly calculated that sending the extra form results in enough additional response that it saves money over sending people door to door to get the information. Same with the pre-census warning letter.

5. chillinoncentral April 15th, 2010 at 4:36 pm

   I thought it was interesting to how impotantly the government views census responses… did you know that there is a monetary penalty that can be imposed (albeit, only as a last resort) for failing to respond? Here is how it reads in an online FAQ:

   Although the law makes it a crime not to answer the decennial census, the American Community Survey and other mandatory censuses, and authorizes the courts to impose a fine of up to $5,000 for failure to respond, the Census Bureau views this approach as a last resort. Rather than emphasizing or seeking the imposition of penalties, we encourage response by explaining the importance of the questions we ask and how the information benefits the community.