28 pages? Holy c***. They wold have to pay me for my time to fill that out.
Technically, yes, it’s mandatory to reply, in terms of statute you can be fined for not replying, but legal action is never actually taken against individuals and nobody actually gets fined.
However, if you don’t reply you’ll constantly have a variety of Census workers calling/visiting for a couple of months.
I got one last year & refused to fill it out. They eventually start calling and all you have to do is ask them to cite the direct US Code passed/authorized by the US Congress per their authority under the US Constitution that mandates you fill this out. They will hem & haw for a while, but will eventually give up.
Throw it away. The most they can do is fine you $100, but from what I’ve read, no one has been prosecuted for decades.
You’ll find it’s only 14 pages, not 28; the other 14 are the same thing in Spanish.
“Has anyone received one of their 28-page survey forms?”
I have never heard of it, but I have not been in the USSA
since 2005.
Anyway, I would tell them to go suck an egg.
From Wikipedia ‘cause its quick:
Many Americans found filling out the long form to be burdensome and intrusive, and its unpopularity was a factor in the declining response rate to the decennial census. In 1995, the Bureau began the process of changing the means of obtaining the demographic, housing, social, and economic information from the census long form to the ACS. Testing began in 1996, and the ACS program began producing test data in 2000, 2001, and 2002. The full program was implemented by 2010.
The legal authority for the ACS is 13 U.S.C. § 141 and 13 U.S.C. § 193.
[edit] Implementation
The ACS sends surveys to approximately 3 million housing units and group quarters in the U.S., in every county, American Indian and Alaska Native area, and Hawaiian Homeland, and in Puerto Rico annually (250,000/month). Data are collected primarily by mail, with Census Bureau telephone and personal visit follow-up. A fraction of those who do not respond to the survey are randomly selected for intensive follow-up, and the final response rate for that group was 98 percent in 2009. Because most nonrespondents are not selected for intensive follow-up, the ACS only includes approximately 2 million final interviews per year. In 2009, completed ACS interviews represented 66.2 percent of the housing units initially selected for inclusion in the sample.
The Department of Commerce has stated that those who receive a survey form are required to provide answers to a list of questions about themselves and their households, including their profession, how much money they earn, their source of health insurance, their preferred mode of transportation to and from work, and the amount of money they pay for housing and utilities. Those who decline to answer these questions may receive follow-up phone calls and/or visits to their homes from Census Bureau personnel. The Census Bureau prefers to gain cooperation by convincing respondents of the importance of participation, therefore, if you don’t respond they follow-up with phone calls and/or visits. However, Section 221 of Title 13 U.S.C., makes it a misdemeanor to refuse or willfully neglect to complete the questionnaire or answer questions posed by census takers and imposes a fine of not more than $100. This fine is changed by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 from $100 to not more than $5,000. To date, no person has ever been charged with a crime for refusing to answer the ACS survey, which several U.S. Representatives have challenged as unauthorized by the census act and violative of the Right to Financial Privacy Act. The Department of Commerce states that it is “not an enforcement agency.”[2]
The processed information provides annual estimates for all states, as well as all cities, counties, metropolitan areas, and population groups of 65,000 people or more. For smaller areas, it is necessary to combine multiple survey years to obtain reliable estimates: three survey years in areas with 20,000 to 65,000 people, and five survey years in areas with fewer than 20,000 people. The quality of these samples was originally intended to match that of the decennial census long form, but because the sample size of the ACS is smaller than originally expected, ACS estimates are less precise than the comparable estimates from Census 2000 and prior decennial census years.
Survey methods:
* Mail: Self-enumeration
* Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI), approximately 3 weeks after the mailout
* Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) by Census Bureau field representatives.
[edit] Opposition
The surveys asks for more information, and at a higher frequency of polling, than the simple enumeration required by U.S. Constitution Article I Section 2. Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, who opposes the ACS, said of it that the founding fathers of the United States “never authorized the federal government to continuously survey the American people. More importantly, they never envisioned a nation where the people would roll over and submit to every government demand.”[3]
Feel free to make your own call...I did it but gave them false answers sorta playin with them...
Up to you...
I got one last year, I threw it out. A couple of phone messages were left, that’s about it. I would have payed the $100 for not filling it out, if it got to that.
They will hound you to death if you do not reply, but if you very firmly tell them you are not going to answer their questions they will eventually go away.
They try to make it sound like what they are asking is reasonable and necessary but............... it is all about central planning, and the redistribution of wealth.
I personally would tell them I will not participate in spending money the country does not have.
Apparently it’s legal, but it’s not constitutional.