
What happens if I don't fill out my census form? (2019) - cVwEq
https://people.howstuffworks.com/question345.htm
======
ken
The US census was infamously used to assist in rounding up Americans of
specific ethnic backgrounds for concentration camps.

It would go a long way to easing people’s minds if they had some way to
guarantee that this could not happen again. I realize there is value in
gathering attributes beyond just “one person”, but storing these attributes in
a way that can be connected to addresses seems seriously problematic.

~~~
yardstick
I agree that the data should be treated anonymously and confidentially, with
severe punishment to abuses.

Would the lack of census data prevented the concentration camps from
operating? It may have instead taken longer and required more people, but I
would expect that at the time anyone with a Japanese/Chinese look or name to
have been detained anyway. Side note: It seems even the 2nd amendment didn’t
help citizens resist agains oppression.

I suspect these days the government has enough information already on its
citizens through other means (intelligence agencies etc) than the census, to
still target based on race if they wanted to.

Immediately after 9-11 the discrimination against Muslim, Arabic and other
minorities was rather pronounced. No census data needed to that either. People
just judged by visual appearance or name.

~~~
ken
> I agree that the data should be treated anonymously and confidentially, with
> severe punishment to abuses.

What constitutes "abuse"? Differential privacy is hard. Once the data has been
collected, simply not being an expert in statistics can be enough to
accidentally leak sensitive data. The government is simultaneously the data
collector, data user, and prosecutor of abuses, so I'm skeptical that much
will come of any such promise. Maybe a letter of apology in 50 years.

> I suspect these days the government has enough information already on its
> citizens through other means (intelligence agencies etc) than the census, to
> still target based on race if they wanted to.

Pointing out that ethnic minorities are likely to be screwed anyway in such a
situation, even without census data, is not going to ease anyone’s mind.

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lsiebert
This is worth quoting here IMHO:

"However, even if you don't get fined for not filling out the census form,
there are some good reasons you should do it anyway. Seats in the House of
Representatives seats are apportioned by population, with the most populous
states receiving the most seats. Federal and state governments rely on census
data to budget for social welfare programs that assist the poor, elderly,
disabled and veterans. Cities and private industry use demographic figures to
plan new hospitals and housing developments, and to assess the need for new
schools or new strip malls. So, not filling out the census form may cost you
something in the long run."

~~~
coryrc
Some of us live where we oppose all of the current elected officials. In that
case, it sounds like opting out is the only effective "vote" we can make in a
FPTP system

~~~
jonny_eh
That's like cutting of the nose to spite the face.

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chadthenderson
In 2010 I just kept forgetting to fill out the census. My census guy left
notes on my apartment door begging me to call him. Finally, one day, he
literally popped out of the fucking bushes with the census form.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
I kept getting some mid-census domestic abuse questionnaire a couple years
ago. I had zero interest in filling it out but they were persistent about that
too.

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MaysonL
They missed me in 1990 and 2000, when I was unconventionally housed (living in
the office).

~~~
thedirt0115
Hopefully you are in a better situation now. For anyone who is currently
homeless, but wants to be counted, the census bureau has the following plans:

March 30, 2020: Counting people who are in shelters.

March 31, 2020: Counting people at soup kitchens and mobile food vans.

April 1, 2020: Counting people in non-sheltered, outdoor locations, such as
tent encampments and on the streets.

See this for more information: [https://2020census.gov/en/what-
is-2020-census/focus/people-e...](https://2020census.gov/en/what-
is-2020-census/focus/people-experiencing-homelessness.html)

------
teilo
>Note that the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 has increased the fine for any
criminal misdemeanor to as much as $5,000. In practice, though, no one has
been prosecuted for not filling out the census since 1970, according to a 2014
Politifact article.

That article is wrong, and the fine is absolutely not $5,000. If that article
were correct, then there would be _no_ federal fines under $5,000 anywhere.
This is misinformation that the census bureau likes to spread around to scare
people. In face, the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 applies _only_ to criminal
cases.

This means that the fine is actually $100.

I went through this rigmarole when I got one of those off-year census forms
during the Obama administration, asking about what my family eats, how many
toilets we have, etc. I refused to fill it out. A guy showed up at my door. He
showed me the brochure that said it was mandatory, and what the potential fine
was. The same $5,000 number was quoted. I told him I would not be
participating in this program, and that his brochure was lying because this
was not a criminal offense. He agreed it was not a criminal matter. And that
was that.

------
rolleiflex
One thing I’m curious about is, why does a country need to do this in the
first place?

From the example I’m familiar with: the last ever census in Turkey was held in
2007. There on, there is now a live, real-time count of everyone in the
country. Why doesn’t that work in the US?

Surely US is capable of it, but I wonder if the blockage is inertial,
political or just not enough of a priority.

~~~
danso
Can you provide any technical detail as to how a real-time count of every
person is possible? What databases are used to track births and deaths and
emigration in real time? How about income/housing/education characteristics?
Are you a Turkish citizen? If so, are you able to query the government for the
exact population count right now?

~~~
rolleiflex
The population counts are released yearly and I believe you can do what is the
Turkish version of FOIA request to get the live count, though don’t quote me
on the latter part.

Turkey has a central database, called TCKN, that everyone is assigned by birth
or by getting an immigration visa. The births and deaths are tracked by
hospitals and the Revenue Service. Income / education / housing - all of these
are tracked by the central registers and licensing boards. Every Turkish
citizen and resident has an online account at
[https://www.turkiye.gov.tr/?lang=en_US](https://www.turkiye.gov.tr/?lang=en_US)
(for English version) which you can use to view taxes paid, your previous
health records (MRI scans and all should be downloadable) see scripts
fillable, paperwork for legal action by you or against you, census records,
even mobile and landlines registered on your name, and basically pretty much
everything you’d expect a state can do. All of the outputs from this site are
printable PDFs and they have a barcode on them which I think the government
cryptographic signature. So you can get some doc from here, print it out and
bring to someone else and they’d be able to verify it by scanning the barcode.

In other words, they have total knowledge. It’s not just the number of people
in the country. What’s interesting is that it doesn’t rely on self-reporting,
but on ambient data providers. It’s kind of dystopian, but technically fairly
impressive and so far (ominously) relatively benign. Failing all else, it’s
very useful.

~~~
danso
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I remain skeptical that an accurate detailed
count can be automated (at this point in history) but I won’t claim to have
any insight about contemporary life and society in Turkey.

~~~
rolleiflex
I think you are right to be skeptical and I don't claim to have an insight
into how accurate it is. However, mind that while Turkey is culturally about
80% western and 20% non-western, it's really unpredictable where that 20%
shows up. For example, the reason the census count can be reasonably accurate
even in the adversity of undocumented immigrants is that Turkish police can
walk up to anybody they see as suspicious on the street and ask for their TCKN
/ ID to do a spot check for arrest warrants — decidedly free of the need for
the western concept of a 'probable cause' or anything like that, it's a member
of your community asking to validate your ID. Since they have the readers
attached to their mobile phones, the check takes a couple seconds.

This also, by design, makes it really hard to be undocumented in Turkey.
There's a significant skin tone difference between people from the Middle East
and those in Istanbul, and the police does absolutely use this to be more
scrutinous if you're even just walking by them. From an US perspective this is
discrimination, and it definitely is, but this is how it works — and they're
pretty good at spotting non-Turkish people. As a real example in action, there
was a recent directive that required refugees to keep their residences within
the borders of the first municipality they registered in (many of the Syrian
refugees had moved to Istanbul from where they first registered for benefits),
and the police managed to significantly clamp down on unregistered immigrants
fairly quickly and send them back to the cities they registered to.

In this specific case this was the right move since the resources are
allocated to states ( _il_ s) based on where refugees are registered and
Istanbul alone does not have nearly the capacity to house that many refugees.
My point is that Turkish police does have a lot more leeway than the US police
before it becomes socially unacceptable — and while this is overall not a
great thing (loose oversight), it also makes them much more effective at
making a census in the right ballpark.

------
sneak
The US federal government has an exact, real-time count and location of every
single person with a phone in the country due to universal bulk surveillance.

Cross-referenced with the subscriber records from wireless, cable, and utility
companies, databases from data brokers that are fed by loyalty programs and
supermarkets, and every bank or credit card swipe in real-time, they already
have 100% of this data in far higher resolution than will ever be collected by
the census. They know about your address updates even before you tell the DMV.

I will be ignoring the effort.

~~~
DrScump
I have 6 phones. Am I 6 people?

~~~
novok
You registered them under 1 owner cluster that links up to you, so no :D

------
grawprog
I didn't fill out the last census forms in protest of the longform census that
year(in Canada) that asked for what I considered to be unnecessary information
I didn't wish to divulge. Nobody that lived in the house filled one out.
Nothing came of it. Census people showed up at the door every day for a while,
but would leave after a bunch of knocking with no answer. I do normally fill
them out though. For reference Canada has similar census laws to America.

------
pndy
Next national census in Poland happens in 2021 and also here, you can be fined
or sent to prison, get non-custodial sentence by not participating or
providing false answers; persons covered by census are obliged to participate.
Those who by gathering answers for census surveys and processing data will
gain any profits can be imprisoned for up to 5 years.

So far no one from my family was chosen; since fall of the Eastern bloc there
were 2 censuses, in 2002 and 2011

------
downerending
tldr: nothing

(Can confirm, was Census enumerator. You probably will get an in-person
attempt from a very-low-paid enumerator, though.)

~~~
crooked-v
The pay is actually pretty decent, and is cost-of-living adjusted. In Portland
where I live, for example, it's $18/hour, which is way better than some temp
jobs I've had.

~~~
dawnerd
So in theory, I should hold off on answering so someone gets paid to come to
my house?

Do they have a quota to hit, like if I take my time with them do they get
punished?

~~~
jeffdavis
Or maybe they would prefer to spend their time finding people who are actually
hard to enunerate, rather than wasting on someone who is just looking to
consume their time.

~~~
imtringued
The idea is to get "contacts" and tell them to be "hard to enumerate" and then
collect a paycheck.

------
rspoerri
watch "The Census: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" on this topic.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aheRpmurAo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aheRpmurAo)

~~~
ars
Deleted: Made a mistake.

~~~
lonelappde
Your link does not support your claim, and this link gives more detail not
supporting your claim.

[https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-
questio...](https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-
question/plumbing/)

------
droithomme
I got randomly selected for the long one in 2010. There were several questions
I was not able to answer but providing incorrect information is a crime and
not answering is a crime. So I did nothing. They sent one or two threatening
follow ups. Then an in-person enumerator showed up and ran me through the
short-form questions only, which was fine.

~~~
crooked-v
> providing incorrect information is a crime and not answering is a crime. So
> I did nothing.

The correct answer in this case is to say "I don't know". You can write in
stuff on census forms and it's up to the local office to process those as
special cases.

~~~
droithomme
That's not something they say you can do.

In my case the correct answer was to do nothing, then cooperate with the
enumerator on the short form questions, which as I said was fine.

------
vearwhershuh
Nothing. Nothing happens. You may get an in-person visit, and if you blow them
off, nothing also happens.

As with voting, it only encourages them. They are passionate about getting you
to participate because they want the appearance of legitimacy, so you get
obvious fear-and-guilt-prop like this.

~~~
crooked-v
> Nothing. Nothing happens.

Except for your area getting federally undercounted, which loses
representation and tax dollars for you and all your neighbors.

~~~
c22
Is there any reason to believe that more people are failing to fill out the
census in my area than in other areas? Because if the failure rate is about
the same everywhere it probably does make little difference.

~~~
imtringued
How do you know the failure rate is the same everywhere? It is very possible
that the failure rate correlates with the region because it is not a purely
stochastic process. Some users here think the government has no business in
demanding census information and simply ignore it.

~~~
c22
I don't have any data either way, do you? HN users don't represent a
geographical region, per se, but I suppose you could argue that they're mostly
in SF? Regardless, I imagine there are other communities that might also have
a higher-than-baseline failure rate, but absent any evidence I have no reason
to assume they're not fairly randomly distributed geographically. Especially
at the granularity of _US states_.

