The Extraordinary Cost and Intrusiveness of the 2010 Census

If you are like me, you have received several census mailings. You have also been subjected to and bombarded with hundreds of commercials touting about the importance of the census and who it will benefit. Helen Oliveri even wrote a blog post about the negative impact of the foreclosure market on the census.

To date, I have received 4 mailings about the census. The first was a letter letting me know that the census was coming and it is important that I fill the information out. The second was a post card that let me know that I should be receiving my actual census form any day. The third was the actual census form and the fourth is another post card telling me to complete the census form, if I already have not. All of this by Monday, Mar. 22, 2010.

First, why has anyone returned their census forms yet? All of the questions deal with people living at an address on Apr. 1, 2010, still 9 days away. How can you fill in the form and be honest if you fill it out before Apr. 1, 2010. You can only assume.

Second, why does the card say I received a request to participate when the census form envelope states clearly that my response is required by law. That is not a request, it is a summons.

Thirdly, why is there more than one question on the census form? The only question they need to complete the consitutionally required role of the sentence is question 1 for the first person: How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1, 2010?

Why do they ask question 2? Which doesn't trust your answer to question 1. It is redundant.

Questions 3 - 10 are not needed according to the purpose of the census in the constitution. Yet if I fail to answer them, I could be fined, imprisoned, or have to put up with some ACORN worker coming to my home to grill me. They don't need to know whether I live in an apartment, house or mobile home (what about duplexes and triplexes), they don't need my phone number, they don't need my name, they don't need my race, they don't need my age or whether I am of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin. And, they certainly don't need to know if sometimes I stay elsewhere.

And they don't have to repeat these questions for every other person living there. Although they only get that intrusive for the first six. Beyond that they only want names, age, gender, relationship. But then, that's only up to a total of twelve. I guess if there are more than twelve, they don't care. (This would leave out a lot of people in some foreign countries that I have visited).

So here we have it, an estimated $11.8 billion for a census. How many millions, or tens of millions, or hundreds of millions have been spent just on mailings. How many millions, or tens of millions, or hundreds of millions have been spent on advertising? And how many more will be spent on people coming to your doors with the long form? And how many millions will be spent prosecuting those that refuse to answer anything more than question 1. You know, the only question that is covered by the constitutional requirement for the census.

The census was only to be used for determining state representation in the House of Representatives and to determine equitable taxation to the states based upon population. Government has taken the role of the census far beyond what the framers envisioned, and we are diminished as a result of that.