The Census will be sending out 6 mailings to every household, followed by 4 in-person visits by a Census worker, until they reach everyone possible. Obviously, as people fill out their Census form, they will be dropped from future mailings & in-person visits (but no doubt mailings are prepared ahead of time, and it will take time for the notice that you have completed the Census to catch up).
The first 2 mailings were planned to arrive about 1 week apart, and were sent to the Postal Service a month ago. Pretty much everyone will get both of those. The third or fourth mailing is an actual paper Census form. If you fill that out on paper and mail it back, I expect that will take even longer to get you recorded as having completed your Census, so you’ll likely get more mailings afterwards.
The in-person visits will start May 1st and continue thru May & June. At least, that was the plan. It’s probably going to change now. I know my appointment to get my Census credentials was ‘postponed’ until further notice.
They considered doing phone call Census interviews, but worried about how to do that without a bunch or robocall scammers springing up to cheat the public. Possibly they will look further at this now, trying to find an effective way.
P.S. I don’t understand the vehemence of people here ‘blaming the government’ for multiple Census mailings. The Census is a really important part of our democracy, and they ought to work hard to do it right. And mailing people is the cheapest way to do it.
I must get 2-3 mailings every week trying to sell me on additional credit cards, which I certainly don’t need. Plus all the other junk mail. Even charities that I do support insist on spending money to mail me multiple times.
And I got both a letter and a post card from them. After finishing I got a receipt page with a number on it, that I copied, along with advice I might get future mailing to complete the census and to ignore them.
Apparently the British got so many write-in responses of “Jedi” for a religion census question that they included it as an official option for the next one. Doesn’t mean anything official for “Jedi” as a religion (they don’t get tax breaks or anything), but it does mean that a lot of people wrote it in.
And I don’t understand the people, some who posted up thread, putting nonsensical answers such as ‘Klingon’ or ‘Jedi.’ They are undoubtedly the same people of bitch that the government doesn’t work, or doesn’t work for them. It only works for all of us is we all support the government.
The one I got specifically said that I might get another one soon and it’s ok to disregard as a duplicate. I checked and it had the same alphanumeric code inside, so you only need to do it once.
The numbers are always different in a few months. The census is always a somewhat inaccurate snapshot in time, and the interval is constitutionally specified. They’re not going to redo it in a few months. They’re going to redo it in another 10 years.
It’s not clear to me that the government has a valid use for ancestry data that outweighs the danger of them gathering it. Historically, many governments have done very bad things with that sort of information. Some are doing it right now!
Yeah, given that the form required an answer yet gave no guidance in cases where you aren’t sure, I suspect that there will be a lot of garbage data there, e.g., people just guessing something because it’s making them put something in. (I put “unknown”.)
How could the government do anything statistical or analytical regarding race/ethnicity if it has no race/ethnicity data? Or all the other entities, public and private, for-profit and not-for-profit, that use census numbers? :dubious:
You can’t say something basic like County X or City Y or Ward Z is a% white, b% black, c% Hispanic, etc. without data. And then you can’t do analyses like determining if counties or cities or neighborhoods of cities that are predominantly black or latino are underfunded in some public service compared to predominantly white counties/cities/neighborhoods.
Question: I completed the census, including the information for my family. Can other family members now disregard their letter, or do they still need to go online and respond as well?
If you answered for your entire household, then the rest of your household can ignore it. But each separate household in your family – i.e., a sister and her husband and children living in another home – has to answer for itself.
The questionnaire specifies “living at this address on April 1”. My mother-in-law, who’s home is with her son in the same area, is staying with us to reduce her COVID exposure (we’re boring, inactive people). She probably will still be with us on April 1.
But ours isn’t her “home”, so I left her off our household report, and coordinated with my brother-in-law to be sure to include her on his report.
I think that, under the Census’ standards, she would count as “living with” you. But if you coordinated with your brother-in-law to use the same standard, it works out the same.
I see you disregarded the “that outweighs the danger of them gathering it” part. Do you need a list of the horrific things that governments do and have done with ethnicity data?
You can absolutely do the kinds of things you’re talking about by doing some random sampling rather than by establishing a database that correlates names, addresses, and ethnicity data.
It showed my address and I answered yes, hit next and it asked if I would be staying at this address on April 1st, answered yes, but the only button provided was Previous not Next.
Apparently the site does not like Edge or Internet Explorer, I tried both. Chrome worked just fine.